


Illegal Magic is Fun Magic

by Signel_chan



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Thievery, Multi, magic shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-16 02:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7247845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signel_chan/pseuds/Signel_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a Ylisse where dark magic is outlawed and punishable by banishment, Henry tests the boundaries of the law on small children and seems to have no intentions to do anything more, despite his boyfriend Ricken's disdain for him doing any cursing to begin with. And then Henry gets an idea that's so unlawful and illegal, he's got to do it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The second floor of the library always seemed less like a quiet reading place and more like a meeting area for various groups with wildly differing agendas. This loud and crowded room, even at its quietest, still sounded like a busy street café than a library, which made it simply the most perfect place to practice outlawed dark magic on unsuspecting bystanders. After all, how would someone who’s been lightly cursed be able to figure out who did it to them in such a bustling room?

That was the logic Henry used every single time he ended up needing to kill time in the library, and with his large stack of disguised dark tomes, everyone around would assume he was just some college kid studying for classes. They wouldn’t give him a second glance once they saw the science course titles on the spines of the books, never suspecting that each and every one of those books contained information on curses and dark spells. Why would they, after things of the sort had been banned from being practiced within Ylisse’s borders decades before? Magic itself wasn’t the problem—in fact, magic was widely used by anyone capable of it—but the dark and harmful variety was looked down upon. Strong punishments were doled out to anyone caught practicing dark magic, including but not limited to being banished from the country.

It certainly made Henry’s days of fun at the library risky, but he loved the thrill of living on the edge. However, just because he did didn’t mean that his significant other approved of the behavior. Like always, coming to the corner table with his arms filled with actual textbooks of his own, Ricken looked almost ashamed to be sitting himself beside someone who had just been cackling as he watched a small child develop the tiniest of twitches through magical intervention. “One of these days, you’re going to get caught doing that,” he said, curbing Henry’s laughter. “And I can’t get banished with you. They’ll eat me alive, wherever we end up because of you.”

“Aw, stop being so worried about this,” Henry replied, closing his open book and looking to Ricken with a huge grin. “It’s just a kid. They get twitchy all the time. No one’ll suspect I cursed him, so it’s all good. Just, uh, don’t come running in here next time, will ya? Can’t go drawing attention to my operation when I don’t draw it myself.”

True to what he said, a few people in the room were looking at the two, eyebrows raised but no questions asked. Once everything returned to normal, like it always did, the duo at the table found themselves being ignored once more, and Ricken sighed. “I really wish you’d just stop doing this stuff all the time. I can’t imagine having to explain to Chrom that my boyfriend has been using illegal magic all this time…”

“I’m not gonna get caught, Ricken, so just calm down!” Raising one finger, Henry reopened his book with his other hand and flipped to a random page, looking over at it to read: “’A dark variant of simple magic. Impossible to trace, impossible to determine as dark.’ It’s all for fun and not for stuffy healer stuff. Don’t really see what the problem with using it is.”

“The problem with using it is that it’s not allowed! Do you think Chrom enforces the rule just because he thinks it’s fun?” Ricken answered his own question before Henry got to it, simply because he knew Henry wouldn’t answer it seriously: “No, he doesn’t do it because it’s fun, he does it because it’s the law! And we are good citizens, not lawbreakers!”

“Says you, anyway. I’m more fond of living my life like there aren’t any stupid rules like that.” He paused for a moment, hearing Ricken groan at him, before adding, “I also live my life like puns aren’t frowned upon. And since those are and I still use them, can you really blame me for my dark magic habits?”

Shushing his boyfriend to make sure no one heard him admit his guilt on the matter, Ricken shook his head. “I guess not, but I really wish you wouldn’t practice your magic in public. At least when you do it at home, the only person you hit with anyone is the old lady upstairs. She doesn’t mind it, or at least, if she does she hasn’t told anyone…” He sighed as Henry snorted in laughter. “It’s not funny, okay? What if she does mind it and hasn’t told anyone because she doesn’t think anyone will believe her?”

“She’s an old lady! She doesn’t mind anything that isn’t killing her!” Now laughing harder than he could contain, Henry had to take some time to collect himself, time during which many people came and went around their table, paying them no mind aside from the chuckles and laughs that the white-haired man was choking out. When he finished laughing, he laid his head down on one of his books, wiping tears from one of his eyes. “Oh man, that was a good one. Wasn’t it?”

“It was a joke about our nice neighbor dying. I don’t get how it could be funny at all, but whatever.” Also resting his head on a book, Ricken rolled his eyes when Henry tried to start explaining the humor behind his morbid joke. “Listen, don’t want to hear it. Let’s just go home, forget about how you could have gotten us both in serious trouble here today, and act like nothing ever happened here.”

“I don’t know if I want to do that,” Henry bluntly replied, a chuckle escaping him once more. “Besides, don’t you know what’s happening in here in, like, two minutes? It’s the one thing that’s going to make all of this worth it to the both of us, I swear!”

“Is it someone repealing the dark magic ban? Because if not, I don’t see how it’ll make you doing illegal things worth anything.” Ricken lifted his head a bit to look around, noticing that the room was starting to clear a bit, but not too much. “But okay, it’s got to be something important if people are actually moving out of here.”

Henry’s laughter started up once more. “Oh, they’re not moving out. It’s always a blast to make miss ‘I’m in charge here’ squirm when there’s people up here when she comes in. Just you wait and watch, I promise it’s worth it.”

He chose not to answer, but Ricken highly doubted that what Henry was saying had even an ounce of truth to it. They were in a public library, one that he knew was almost always crowded and overflowing with loud people—what kind of disillusioned person would think they could have any control over such a place? But when he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a blonde woman and two dark-haired men walking up to the chaos that was the room, he shrugged it off as it just being more people there to watch the craziness and enjoy the cacophony of multiple people.

And Maribelle, grumbling as she finished ascending the stairs at the fact that her reserved space was currently filled with people who weren’t there for her free etiquette class, looked over at the corner table upon reaching the upper floor, relieved to see familiar faces. The relief turned straight to disgust when she reminded herself that they, like most of the people present, had no reason to attend her class, but at least they were people she knew. “You two work on clearing everyone out,” she told her husband and son, both of whom did not seem thrilled to be present, “and I’ll go see what brings some childless friends of mine out for the evening instead.”

“Or you could not,” her husband replied, only to be whacked by the parasol she was holding. “Ugh, women. What a shame I had to go and marry one.”

While he and his son started doing as they were told (rather reluctantly, but still getting it done), Maribelle casually strolled over to the table where Henry and Ricken were still sitting. “And what, in Naga’s name, do you two think you’re doing here today?” she asked, slamming her hands down on the table and startling them both. “Aren’t you aware of my reservation of this area?”

“Does anyone really respect reservations here?” Henry laughed, watching how Maribelle pursed her lips together in disapproval at him. “Okay, okay, yes we know, but that doesn’t mean we’re leaving. Why, imagine all the fun targets you’re going to be attracting here!”

Her lips came open in shock, a finger being raised and pointed straight into Henry’s gleeful face. “Targets of _what_ , you law-breaking man? Don’t tell me that my dearest friend Ricken has fallen so low as to be dating a mere criminal!” The smile Henry shot her in return was enough to answer her fear, and her finger-pointing turned to her friend’s face instead. “I thought you were better than this, knowing the difference between right and wrong, between criminals and good people!”

“I do know the difference, I swear,” Ricken replied, trying not to be intimidated by his friend’s anger as he came up with a lie to try and save themselves with. “Henry here isn’t talking about using anyone as illegal target practice, if that’s what you’re thinking he’s going to do. He’s a real jokester, you see, and he’s been looking for some new people to tell his jokes to that won’t have already heard them.”

She pulled her hand back, contemplating accepting his answer, while Henry followed up with, “Oh yeah, real big on the jokes! Like that outfit you’re wearing. Kinda hard to beat a joke as big as that one!” He gave her a cheesy grin as she looked at the pastel pink dress she was wearing for a moment, before tossing her head back and storming off, leaving the two of them there alone once more. “Boy, that was close,” Henry said, dropping his grin to sigh dramatically. “I’ve heard a lot about miss Maribelle’s keen nose for illegal magic, but I didn’t think she’d actually ever catch on to me. Maybe you’re right about us needing to go.”

“I was right about it before Maribelle even got involved, but her being here makes it that much worse.” Ricken watched as his friend walked back over to her husband, talking to him about something he couldn’t hear, all while gesturing in their general direction a time or two. “What’s she even doing, reserving this floor? I thought she was ‘too good’ for public places like this.”

Henry was also watching what Maribelle was doing, but out of the corner of his eye he was checking something in one of his dark magic tomes. “She’s got some sort of kid obedience class that she holds up here every few weeks. Great place for kids to come by and be cursed. She’s never suspected a thing of me before today, so maybe it’s not me being bad at doing bad things—maybe it’s you being here that’s throwing everything off.” He playfully pushed Ricken’s arm, the redhead unamused at the antics. “Okay, okay, hearing you loud and clear. Getting out of here before anything else happens.”

They were barely standing up out of their seats before something new caught Henry’s attention and made him sit right back down, something Ricken was not impressed with. “Oh no you don’t,” he said, tugging at his boyfriend to try and get him back up. “We’re leaving, which means both of us need to be going, not just me.”

“But she’s starting her class,” Henry replied, his eyes focused on Maribelle once more, “and I don’t know about you, but I’d like to know how to raise a kid to behave in case, uh, someday we’re given that chance by Naga.” Ricken sighed, letting go of Henry’s arm and sitting back down because he knew there was no winning the battle, not when Henry was in the mindset of having children. “If she can be a total bitch and have a kid, why can’t two cool guys like us do the same?”

“There are so many reasons why, I’m not even going to start listing them off.” Propping his head up with his arm, Ricken sighed once more. “No, wait, I am listing one. Because we’re clearly not capable of raising a kid, not when one of us thinks that illegal activities are a fun way to spend the day!”

Henry waved a hand, brushing off the comment like it was nothing. “Just because I don’t always follow stupid laws doesn’t mean I don’t know how to be a good parent. Why, I’m pretty sure I’d be a better parent than most of the people who come here with their kids for this class! Can you imagine how bad it must be, having to go to a grade-A rude woman for lessons on how to make your kid obey you?” He laughed, leaning forward so that he was almost laying on the table, but his eyes were focused on one of the tomes still before him. “Why, I’m sure that no one with any sense would dare come in here and actually listen to her yap about proper parenting techniques!”

“Then why are we here again?” Still unamused, Ricken heard how Henry was trying so hard not to laugh any louder than he already was, and immediately assumed that the original statement of him wanting to watch her for the learning experience was nothing but a lie. “No, please don’t tell me you’re keeping us here because you’re still set on cursing kids. Anything but that, seriously.” The nonexistent break in the laughter confirmed that fear, and Ricken went to stand back up, but Henry shook his head at the motion. “I’m not sitting here if you’re going to actively break the law in front of someone who can catch you.”

“But Ricken, you’ve got to stay here with me. You know if you’re gone, she’s only going to suspect me harder,” Henry whined in return, reaching for his boyfriend with a wildly-waving arm. “If you’re here, I can sit here and not be caught because why would I do anything if my moral compass is beside me? I’d be stupid to do anything stupid!”

Knowing entirely too well that Henry was lying through his teeth, Ricken wanted to go through with leaving, but something inside of him told him that leaving would just result in Henry causing more trouble than anything else. “You know what, you’ve won me over,” he said, defeated. “I won’t leave, but you’re not cursing anyone either! We’re just going to sit and watch and that’s all we’re doing here. If I catch you using any magic, good or bad, I am making us leave, end of story.”

“That’s the kind of submissive stuff I like hearing come from your mouth!” His grin once again plastered on his face, Henry cackled for a few moments, only going back to his normal giddy laughter when he heard Ricken mutter something he couldn’t make out. “Oh, what’s the matter there, Ricken? Don’t like it when I get my way? But that’s not how you act when we’re alone together and you know it.”

All Ricken could think to do was loudly shush his boyfriend before he said anything else that could be taken remotely inappropriately, and the noise was heard across the room, where Maribelle was watching the two intently, a disapproving frown on her face. “Just what do they think they’re doing, staying in here for this class?” she loudly asked, catching the attention of her husband, who grumbled some answer in return. Clearly it wasn’t the answer she had wanted to hear, because she swung her parasol at him, hitting him across the chest. “When I asked that, I expected helpful responses, not someone being rude about having to be here! If you so badly wanted to be elsewhere, why show up after all?”

“Because,” he replied, not batting an eye as she whacked him again, “it was either show up today or starve, and the last time you refused to cook for me you proceeded to get angry that my dinner was better than yours.”

She was close to seething in anger as she reared her arm back to hit him for a third time, but the sound of her son clearing his throat to get her attention caused her to forget about the violence. “Yes, Brady dearest? Is there something you need from me?” She completely dropped any hint of being unhappy while talking to her son, something that made her behavior come off forced.

“Uh, yeah, sure is, Ma. Mind if I take your parasol for a minute? Wanna show it to a friend. She don’t believe it could survive bein’ a weapon.” Ignoring that his mother had cringed several times as he spoke, he held his hand out, waiting for her to hand over what he’d requested. When she didn’t, he tilted his head to one side and looked at her, as if expecting an explanation for why she wasn’t passing over the parasol. “C’mon Ma, it’s just for a minute or two, tops. Lucy just wants to see it to believe it.”

“I was unaware you had any friends by that name,” she finally said, handing over her parasol as she spoke. “And if you’re referring to sweet princess Lucina by such a disgusting nickname, you better just hand my parasol back right now.” He looked down at the pink and white frilly thing he was now holding, and then to his mom’s outstretched hand, before ducking away without another word. This, naturally, displeased Maribelle more than he must have figured it would. “Brady, you naughty child, how dare you disrespect me like that!” She turned to her husband, pointing in the direction their son had scurried off in. “Go get him to bring me my parasol back right this instant, Lon’qu! I demand it!”

“And I demand that you leave me out of your problems.” Crossing his arms over his chest, Lon’qu looked down at Maribelle, shaking his head as he did. “Some class you must teach here, if you can’t even keep your own child in check.”

She could feel her face turning red from how angered she was, but there was a lot of embarrassment mixed in. Surely other parents who were in attendance were watching this take place, and they were judging her and her lack of parenting skills. How was she going to be able to keep her position as teacher of the class? “I can too keep him in check,” she snapped, “but only when he’s behaving like how I’ve taught him to! It’s not my fault that a ruffian like you is his father, therefore making him predisposed to bad behavior!”

“Hm, I don’t feel like listening to you speak anymore.” Squinting his eyes a bit to get a good glare in at his wife, Lon’qu took a few steps away and sat down in the nearest chair he could find, never once taking his eyes off of her once he was seated. “Have fun being insufferable as always, you vile woman.”

Her mouth opened to speak, but no words came out for quite some time, during which she stood in her spot shaking with anger. The first sound she managed to make was a low scream, which she muffled by covering her mouth, but still catching the attention of everyone who was gathered for her class. Once she noticed they were all watching her, as if they were expecting her to begin instructing, she shook her head and motioned towards the clock, which thankfully read that there were still a few minutes before the advertised start time. “I need to find Brady and get my parasol back before class begins, at any rate,” she told herself once she was calm enough to speak at a whisper. “That boy should know by now that taking what is mine is not allowed, no matter who he wants to show it to!”

Finding him didn’t take much effort, as he’d gone to one of the tables in the room, the parasol being held carefully in his hands. “Can’t accidentally break this and have Ma kill me for it, so just look with your eyes and not with your hands, okay Lucy?” he said, dropping the parasol on the table in front of a blue-haired girl with an unimpressed expression on her face. “Sure, it takes a beatin’ or twenty every day when Ma’s feelin’ feisty, but she’d murder her favorite child, that bein’ me, if anythin’ happened to this.”

“It…just looks like an umbrella, Brady,” Lucina replied, putting her finger to her lips as she investigated the item. “A really fancy umbrella. I’m sure Mother has a few of these in the closet at home, and yes, they do take quite a beating. Why, Morgan and I will pretend to be at war with some of the older umbrellas in the house when left unattended!”

“But I bet’cha you two don’t do anythin’ quite like this with your umbrellas!” Picking it back up, Brady positioned himself as if he was about to hit a ball being pitched at him with the parasol, only to find someone grabbing it when he went to swing. This time, it was his mother clearing her throat to get his attention, and he grimaced when he realized it was her standing there. “Ma, I promise I wasn’t about to break your parasol! Sorry for even havin’ it anywhere it could’ve gotten broken!” he apologized, tears welling up in his eyes. “Just don’t make a fool outta me in front of the class again, please!”

“I can agree, he wasn’t going to break it, I don’t think,” Lucina chimed in, watching how her friend was scared of his mother being involved in their conversation. “In fact, I was just saying how nice of an umbrella it is.”

Maribelle’s eye twitched at the word incorrectly describing her most prized possession. “I’m sorry, but as the child of the highest-ranking official in our country, I would have assumed that you would have been taught the difference between an umbrella and a parasol. Someone, somewhere in your minimal education thus far, has really failed you.”

“Ma, there ain’t that much of a difference between them, but leave Lucy and how smart she is alone, will ya?” Brady was sniffling, letting go of the parasol to wipe tears off of his face. “She doesn’t know the difference and that’s okay, right? I mean, I don’t even really know the difference, ‘side from you sayin’ that’s a parasol and not an umbrella.”

If she’d been hurt before at Lucina incorrectly identifying her parasol, to hear her own child doing it was a million times more painful. After whacking him with it a couple times, Maribelle grabbed Brady’s arm and dragged him away from the table, going back to her position in the middle of the room to begin the class and publicly scold him. This left Lucina at the table, slowly getting up to follow them to do what she’d shown up for.

And once the class was started, Henry was once again flipping through his dark magic tomes, wondering to himself what kinds of havoc he could cause in a place that was already clearly tumultuous. There was a quality to the humming and the gentle sighs he was making, something just noticeable enough that it was making Ricken uneasy. “Hey, remember what I said about no magic in this place,” he said as a reminder, hoping Henry would listen to him again. “We’re not here to cause trouble, remember?”

“Is it causing trouble when I’m just looking at spells, not thinking about using them?” Henry mouthed the word “today” after he finished speaking, something Ricken couldn’t catch him doing, and he chuckled when he got nothing in response. “That’s right, I’m definitely not going against your word and using any of this silly magic in here. I’m just looking a spell or two up, which is no big deal at all, not if I’m not intending on using it.”

“Minus the part where it’s still illegal just because it’s dark magic, but I guess I can’t complain. At least you’re not going to be using it.” Ricken glanced at the currently open page in the book, making a mental note that it was about a body swapping spell. If anywhere in the near future Henry decided to test out one of those, at least he’d know where it had come from. “What happened to watching the class for parenting tips, anyway?”

That was when Henry looked from his book and over to the group in the center of the room, shrugging as he examined what was going on. “Looks like they’re just going over basics today. A polite child is a proper child, whatever that means, and I think that cow running things is doing her class on manners today.” He paused, stifling a loud laugh. “As if she’s a good person to be learning those from! Do you see how nasty she is to her kid?”

“In public she might be a bit mean to him, but I’ve known Maribelle for a long time and I’m sure she’s nothing but loving to him at home.” Right as Ricken looked for himself, Maribelle began hitting her son with her parasol, screeching something about his ignorance, which made Ricken sink back into his seat. “Or maybe she’s completely rude to him there too, I don’t know! Henry, if we’re sitting here, we’re going to do something about her behavior towards her own kid!”

“Something like a curse?” he asked, hope in his voice, only to be shot down by Ricken’s repeated reminder that they weren’t causing trouble. “Now you’re sending mixed signals here and I don’t think I like it. You want to do something, but we’re both good at _magic_ , not face-to-face confrontation. Do I look like I want to be a punching bag, or rather, a smacking bag with that stupid umbrella of hers?”

Ricken cringed as he thought hard about what he’d just heard, because it was entirely true, and it wasn’t like he knew of any safe legal magic that could be used in a library. The last thing he wanted either of them to do was to cast an elemental spell that ruined the building they were in, and that was just what most legal spells were. “No, and I don’t think I want to be one either,” he meekly replied, accepting that he wasn’t going to get anything done and that Henry only would be if he were allowed to do his dark magic. “Forget that I said anything about doing something. I just thought stopping my friend would be the right thing to do here.”

Although Henry acted like he had forgotten about the suggestion, he had a new goal in mind as he read through his tomes: what if he could curse her to be nicer to her child, as Ricken would like it to be? Dark magic wasn’t just for nasty things, as a fair amount of what made it up had good intentions, so there had to be something in existence for this particular purpose. For the rest of their day in the library, he dedicated his time to the search for the exact spell he needed, but found nothing by the time the class was dismissed and everyone was leaving. The same failure happened over the next several weeks, time he always spent sitting in that same spot there in the library. Sometimes Ricken came to join him, other times he was there alone, but regardless of if his boyfriend was present, there were no fun spells cast at unaware children. There was too much hinging on Henry finding what he was looking for.

And then, before the class began one day, he found something even _better_.

* * *

Coming up the stairs to the second floor of the library, Maribelle could hear the heavy footsteps behind her, two set of them. While she was definitely accustomed to hearing her husband dread coming to her class, she had never heard her son come upstairs with such reluctance. “I thought you were always thrilled to come to class, Brady, to see your disobedient friends and their parents,” she commented, not turning her head to see his reaction, “and to hear you be so hesitant today is quite worrisome.”

“Trust me Ma, if ya knew what’s got me not wantin’ to be here, you’d wanna turn tail and run just as fast,” Brady said in return, making his mother so curious about what he meant that she forgot to cringe at his horrible grasp of language. “Bet I should tell ya now before it comes as a secret, but—“

Cutting her son off before he could finish, Maribelle guessed, “You got yourself a girlfriend? Oh, but you’re a little young, don’t you think?” She stopped almost at the top of the stairwell, turning around right as Lon’qu, not caring enough to stop walking, ran straight into her, quickly changing her focus from her assumption on her son’s life (which he ignored) and to her grumbling husband. “Excuse me, watch where you’re walking next time! I clearly stopped to speak with Brady, yet you were so unobservant to notice the stop!”

“Because no one in their right mind stops walking on the stairs.” Lon’qu waited a moment, to see Maribelle start to get angry, then he shrugged. “Must have forgotten you aren’t in your right mind. My apologies.” With that, he brushed past her as she stood there sputtering for words, and Brady followed him, not looking at his mother for even a second.

She had to quickly collect herself and move out of the way, as other people were also trying to come up the stairs at the same time, and she was doing nothing but impeding their progress. When she made it up to the upper floor, her first act was to find the same chair as always that Lon’qu had retreated to, wordlessly hitting him a few times with her parasol before moving on to the next order of business. Finding Brady was a bit harder, as always, but because they were the first people upstairs for the class, she couldn’t just look for his friends and find him with them. She really had to search.

Or, she could just turn around and see him standing there, looking ashamed about something. “Ma, before they get here, I’ve gotta say who’s comin’ to your class today,” he blurted out, trying to keep his shame in check as he spoke. “Lucy got tired of comin’ to class by herself so she invited her parents and they’re actually comin’ today. You’re gonna be instructin’ Chrom on how to parent Lucy better.”

Maribelle’s eyes widened and she could feel her jaw dropping at the news. “The man in charge of all of us thinks that I should instruct him on parenting skills? Why, that’s the greatest news ever! If he’s impressed, which he should be, perhaps he’ll make this class of mine a for-profit thing at a higher level!” She wrapped her arms around Brady and squeezed him tightly, bouncing up and down as he stood there like a rock. “Dear, thank you so much for telling your mother this lovely news! Why, this is infinitely more exciting than finding out about you getting a girlfriend!”

“Uh, you’re welcome, Ma, but I never said anythin’ ‘bout gettin’ a girlfriend.” His words were forced out, something Maribelle didn’t notice in her newfound excitement about what she was going to get to do. “Girls aren’t even interestin’ to me, so why would I wanna have a girlfriend? Unless you mean like a friend that’s a girl, but you already knew ‘bout Lucy so that’s nothin’ new to you.”

“Hush now, Brady, you’re babbling like a lovesick fool and I won’t hear a word of it,” Maribelle told him, breaking away from hugging him. “You run off and entertain any of those little friends of yours—and especially your girlfriend, if you get the chance—and I’ll begin preparing what lesson I’m going to teach today’s session!” She watched as he rolled his eyes and grumbled something, at which a new idea came to her. Her parasol, which had been carefully held in her hand even through the hug, was then shoved into Brady’s chest, so that he could grab it and look at it with equal parts disgust and confusion. “Do me a favor and remind everyone what this is, if you will.”

He rolled his eyes once more, glaring at the parasol as if it were the more-loved child in the family. “Ma, that’s gotta be one of the most stupid things you’ve ever told me to do, and you’ve told me to do a whole lot of stupid things. No one cares about your umb—parasol.”

“I heard that!” she snapped, waggling her finger at him in disapproval. “An _umbrella_ is used to shield from rain, while a _parasol_ is used for shielding from the sun. I would never take my silk and bow parasol out in a spring storm, but if you put it in the hands of any of your little ingrate friends, they would do just that. Inform them of the difference.”

There was nothing more Brady could do aside from actually do what he was being told, so he put on the straightest face he could manage and told his mother that he would tell all his friends about the parasol. The moment he knew she wasn’t going to hear him, he let out a whine and hung his head in shame. “No one around here cares about the difference, and Ma knows it, but why would she listen if I told her that? She wouldn’t listen if anyone tried tellin’ her that!” Looking at the parasol and its frills and bows, he frowned. “Well, I can think of someone who would convince her, but she wouldn’t come around here ‘cause her and Ma see each other enough everywhere that isn’t here.”

“Brady, what are you doing?” he heard Lucina ask, and he stopped his thoughtful mumbling to look up and see his friend beaming before him. “Oh, does it matter? I can’t believe my parents are actually here for this! Mother is so excited to hear your mother speak, and Father, well, he’s happy to be out of the office for an afternoon! They knew just how much I’d picked up from this class, and they’re really here to pick more up themselves!”

“You seem a lot more excited about this than I thought you’d be.” Just seeing his friend was enough to turn his spirits around a small bit, and Brady watched as she eagerly nodded and broke into a long explanation of why she was so excited; the biggest and most important factor of it all was that it meant her family was going to be together for something, a feat that was rarely ever accomplished. “Man, wish I could be excited ‘bout me and my parents bein’ in the same place, but we’re always together. Ma wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Well today’s the day where that’s the way my family is too!” She looked around the room, as if she was checking to see if her parents had shown up yet, and she gasped when she saw at least one of them. “Come on, Brady, let’s go talk to them! You’ve met my dad before a million times, so this isn’t a big deal at all, right?”

He shook his head. “Nope, not a big deal. He might be the big leader guy to everyone else, but he’s just your dad to me.” The smile on Lucina’s face let him know that he’d said something she really appreciated, and soon she was leading him across the room to where the tall, blue-haired man and his light-haired wife were standing, another child with hair just like Lucina’s (although shorter) before them. They had been in the middle of some conversation, complete with laughter and hair-ruffling from the older man to the young boy, but when Lucina and Brady walked up, they fell silent.

“Mother, Father, I’ve brought Brady over for a quick chat, since I’m sure his mother is busy making her plans for the afternoon,” Lucina said as introduction, beaming at her friend and her family. “He can tell you all about what kind of lovely class she provides everyone here, although there might not be much he can say that I already haven’t!”

Her father looked down at Brady and gave a friendly laugh, pointing at the parasol he was still holding. “Why am I not surprised Maribelle’s taught her son to tote around something like that? It’s always been a wonder how Lissa’s managed to survive her friendship with that woman without picking up that skill, and here’s the proof why.” He laughed once more, making Brady feel a bit awkward as he stood there. “Oh, it’s just a joke. Besides, it’s clear that’s your mother’s umbrella.”

Of all the people in the world to make the mistake of calling the parasol an umbrella, Brady hadn’t expected Chrom to do it, but he’d just been witness to the error and he knew that if he didn’t correct it, his mother would somehow find out and chide him for it. “Actually, it’s not an umbrella,” he started, turning around to do something he’d thought of in the moments since having the difference explained to him for the umpteenth time, “but instead it’s a parasol. And do you know how you can tell what it is?”

Directly across the room from them, Henry was sitting in his normal spot, one of his tomes open in front of him as he watched the beginning of their conversation take place. How bad he felt for that boy, stuck doing his mother’s bidding while she prepared to make a fool out of herself! A child like that deserved a parent much better than the one he had, and Henry was ready to do something about it. The boy wasn’t within sight of his mother, so she wouldn’t notice anything was going on and put a stop to it, and Ricken wasn’t around to keep things from happening how they were meant to. The weeks had gone by and it was about damn time that Henry got to curse someone again.

There was just one tiny problem with his plan, and that was that he had no idea that the parasol that Brady had been given to hold was capable of deflecting curses. Since it belonged to Maribelle, and Maribelle was queen of sniffing out dark magic, it should have been assumed that she had a tool around to help her out with what she did best, but Henry didn’t think about that. And he certainly didn’t think that Brady would open the parasol while explaining how it was different from an umbrella at the exact moment that the curse Henry had cast should have been hitting him.

The curse didn’t bounce back at its caster as it should have, however, as someone that had been listening to the explanation of what made the parasol what it was jumped to see it in its opened state, taking the brunt of the curse into her own body instead. Time seemed to stand still at the moment Lucina doubled over from being struck by dark magic, but before Henry could process that his target had been missed completely, everything in the room, and the world around them, had changed in more ways than he’d ever expected it could due to one little curse.

He headed home that evening with a talkative daughter of his own, one who had been thrilled that he’d been there for the parenting class, while lamenting that her other father hadn’t been in attendance. No one in the world, aside from himself, knew that he’d stolen this child from her rightful parents, and no one ever would. At least, that’s what he thought, but that all changed when he opened the front door to the little apartment he and Ricken shared and saw the redheaded man standing there, waiting for him, with disgust in his eyes and a need to talk about what nonsense had occurred written all over his face.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“What did I tell you about dark magic and how you should respect the law about it? Casting a spell so strong it changed history isn’t respecting any laws, or any people, or anything!” Ricken was most definitely angry, but he had somehow managed to keep his anger in check until after Lucina had been sent to her room (which hadn’t even existed that morning, but certainly existed, just like she was certainly their child). “Do you know how jarring it was? On the news, they were talking about the ruling family and how the younger boy’s birthday is coming up, and then, as if his sister had been erased from history, they suddenly started referring to him as their _only_ child! Chrom doesn’t just have one kid, he has two! You stole one of his kids!”

“Hey, let’s not get so accusatory,” Henry said, raising both hands in a defensive position as he tried not to laugh. “It could have been anyone who cast the curse, but I ended up being the beneficiary from it. Don’t act like I’d do something so wrong as to try and use dark magic to get myself a child. Do I look like a criminal?”

“Yeah, actually, you do look like one!” Grabbing his hair and tugging at it a bit, Ricken paced around the room a few times to try and calm himself, to no avail. “I can’t believe you stole Chrom’s daughter and made her your own. That’s going to get us banished from Ylisse forever when this is all sorted out! My family will disown me for being associated with someone who breaks the law!”

“Calm down, you’re acting like anyone’s going to find out that she ever belonged to anyone who isn’t us.” Henry waved his hand around, pretending to brush away the concern, but Ricken wasn’t having any of it. “The only people in the world who know she ever belonged to Chrom are me and you, and that means that as long as we keep our lips shut about it, the secret’s safe with us! Lucina’s ours, and trust me, that’s a good thing!” Under his breath, and mostly to himself, he added, “It wasn’t what I intended, but it’s still a good thing.”

Ricken, still pacing around and frantically trying to come up with a mental solution that didn’t result in one or both of them being banished for breaking one of the sacred laws, paid no attention to Henry’s whispered addendum. “It’s only a good thing because it means you get a child, but it’s such a bad thing because of literally everything else! Even still, now we have a kid who’s closer to being a teenager than a baby to raise! Didn’t you want a small kid to raise, not someone like her?”

“I could always curse her to be a baby again, if that’s really what you want me to do.” Taking his own suggestion into consideration, Henry broke into a huge grin and clasped his hands together. “But no, that would actually be better! Who’d suspect that our little baby is actually someone else’s child entirely? I’ll get right on looking for the perfect spell for the situation!”

“The only spell you’re casting after this is one to reverse what you’ve done!” Like every time he got stern, Ricken hoped that Henry would follow his demands, but he was greeted with nothing but silence. No laughter and comments of understanding. No regretful apologies and promises to fix what had gone wrong. Nothing. “Henry, you listen to me right now, you’ve got to change things back to normal! Lucina’s not our child, she’s Chrom’s, and she needs to go back where she belongs!”

“She’s exactly where she belongs, as far as anyone else knows. You could try telling her to go ‘home’ I suppose, but she’ll just tell you she is home…” A challenge from Henry normally was presented as a joke, but there was something about this particular one that compelled Ricken to go through with it. Without a word, he left to go speak with the child in the house, leaving Henry standing there, trying his hardest to take the situation seriously. “Come on, Ricken, you know I didn’t mean for you to actually do it!” he called, not honestly caring all that much if his boyfriend came back or not, but knowing that he’d have to follow him to watch what was going to transpire.

Still being silent, Ricken went to the door to the room that, until a few hours ago, had just been used for storage of unnecessary junk they hadn’t wanted to throw out, and grabbed the handle. “Uh, Lucina?” he asked, turning the handle and pushing the door open to find the girl sitting on the floor, smiling at him. “What are you doing, being okay with being here? Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, go home?”

“But Daddy, I _am_ home,” she replied, not breaking her smile even slightly, “and I’m so glad that you and Father are here to spend time with me! We’re going to read tonight, aren’t we?”

She was completely unaware that she was in the wrong house, referring to the wrong people as her parents, and it was the most bizarre thing in the world to Ricken. Coupling it with Henry coming up behind him, having overheard what she’d said, and getting a kick out of her names for them both, and it was an almost surreal experience. One that was ruined long beforehand, and was ruined even more when Henry said, “Oh man, why’s she allowed to call you Daddy? That’s some clear favoritism there!”

“It’s not favoritism when I didn’t ask her to do it, and I definitely didn’t raise her that way,” Ricken replied, very much not amused at Henry’s enjoyment with what he’d heard. “I think Chrom will be furious when he finds out that you’ve done this to his princess, and I don’t want to get in trouble too just because she’s been brainwashed to call me _Daddy_!”

“Father, why is he freaking out about this?” Lucina was standing up, approaching the two in her doorway like she had done that every day of her life. “Is me calling him that weird? Should I call him something else? I guess, if it makes him feel better about things, I could always refer to him as my mother. After all, most children do have a father and a mother, not two of one and none of the other.”

Henry was now trying his hardest to not die of laughter, while Ricken looked positively mortified at what he’d just heard. “No, no, call me Daddy if you feel that’s what best suits me,” he eventually forced out through gritted teeth, before adding, “because if it makes…my little girl…happy, then it makes me happy.”

“That’s what I love hearing you say! Come on now, let’s get to reading stories before bed. I do have a bedtime that I’m sure you’d love to keep me following.” Reaching out to grab one hand of each of her “dads”, Lucina seemed to be super excited to be spending time with them. Ricken was having to force himself to play along, knowing in his heart that what he was taking part in was completely wrong, but Henry (after getting over his laughing fit) had no problems with getting right into his role.

He was so convincing at being Lucina’s dad that he told her all the stories that she could ever have imagined, and when her eyes started fluttering closed he covered her in light kisses and tucked her into bed without even a moment’s hesitation. Once her light was off and they were back outside her room, he dropped his happy demeanor for a moment, sighing contently. “All of that was stuff I’d never imagined I’d get to do in my life, and doing that right there, with her, it was the kind of stuff dreams are made of. Ricken, doing this was the best idea I’ve ever had, and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise.”

“I’ll admit, spending time with her was a lot more fun than I thought it would be,” Ricken conceded, resting his head on Henry’s arm. “It still doesn’t make stealing her from her family right, but it was nice while it lasted. You’re fixing this the first chance you get, though, or else I’m finding a way to do it myself.”

“Ha, as if you are! Do you know what sorts of crazy dark magic I put into this thing? You’ll be breaking the law so many times over if you try fixing anything!” There was the laughter that Henry always seemed to be exuding, as he leaned over so that his head was on top of Ricken’s, red hairs finding their way into his face as he breathed. “You’re stuck with this as our happy little family, forever and for always. It’s not that bad and you’ll get used to it, I swear! This isn’t a joke, and you know how much I love jokes!”

“I do know how much you love them, but I also know how much you love kids, and…” On the inside, Ricken was wanting to pull away from his current position, because showing this sort of physical affection to Henry was the last thing he wanted right then. But he didn’t resist the impromptu cuddling, even with how much he disapproved of what had happened to change their lives that day. He wasn’t going to dive into the world of dark magic to fix things himself and he knew that Henry wasn’t ever going to be made to want to fix things either. This was their new normal, a sad reality but one that had to be accepted nonetheless.

Henry had said something while Ricken was thinking, which had been accompanied with a wayward hand finding itself trailing down the smaller man’s side. While the cuddles could be accepted, Ricken most definitely was not in the mood for anything more, which brought him back to speaking to his boyfriend. “We aren’t doing anything right now, not after everything you’ve already done,” he said, eliciting a loud, playful groan from Henry. Knowing that he was wanting something, Ricken had to bite the metaphorical bullet and come up with a good, non-blaming reason for why they weren’t going to move past their embrace: “What if we managed to wake Lucina up? We would be the worst parents in the world, exposing our child to that.”

“She would never be able to look at her _daddy_ the same way again,” Henry solemnly said, emphasizing the one word in the sentence that made Ricken cringe to hear. “Oh come on, you’ve got to get over the weirdness of that phrase. Lucina’s not just going to accept having to change that to something else, unless you want to make it weirder. And trust me, we can make it a lot weirder.”

“I would rather us not, thank you.” Ricken finally moved away, heading towards their bedroom without worrying if he was being followed or not. Naturally Henry was a couple of steps behind, throwing out suggestions of other slightly-strange names that Lucina could use for him, laughing heavily at some of the more cringe-inducing ones. Having been so used to living alone with his boyfriend, he was quite confused when, in the morning, Lucina proceeded to talk about what she’d heard of that conversation, remarking on some of the name choices while both of her “dads” looked at each other in embarrassment.

“Even with some of the better ideas you might have had, Father, I think I am going to keep things the same and not make any changes,” Lucina concluded, having watched both of the men turn bright red, neither of them sure how to address what she’d been talking about. “I happen to really like what I use, and I think that’s what matters.”

Coughing for a few moments to clear his throat and his mind, Ricken tried to give a reassuring smile to the girl, but he knew deep within that it looked incredibly forced. “It sure is what matters, and as long as you’re happy with what you call me, you can call me it.”

“Unless someday you find out that you like calling your boyfriend that too. Then you’ve gotta change the name, I’d say.” Never a stranger to fighting through embarrassment with jokes, Henry caused Ricken to simply choke on air at the comment, while Lucina looked at him with confusion in her young eyes. “But that’s another story for another day. Just like the life cycle! Man, I can’t wait to get to tell you that one!”

“I guess I will wait for the day you tell these stories as patiently as possible.” Lucina put her hands to her cheeks and gave a happy sigh as she looked at the two men. “Father, Daddy, you two are so great to me! You always give me attention and love and take care of me now just how you think is best, but with my suggestions as well. I don’t think there is a single other child out there that has it as great as me!”

“I might not have known her while she was Chrom’s kid,” Ricken whispered to Henry, blocking his mouth from Lucina’s view, “but I really doubt that she was like this. What else did you put in that curse?”

Henry shrugged, also blocking his mouth but not lowering his voice quite as much when he replied, “Since she wasn’t the target, I found some wicked cool curses that were for making people happier with fake memories and all that. Figured the kid I was originally going to take would appreciate it a lot. I’m sure Lucina does too, but who knows!”

“I heard my name just then. Father, did I do something wrong that requires hushed conversations about me?” The happiness in the girl’s face was beginning to drain, as she now looked at Henry while beating back tears every time she blinked. “I promise, I didn’t do a single thing wrong! Was it one of those stories we read last night? There might have been one or two that was a bit more…mature than something a girl my age should be reading, but I meant no harm by it! I really didn’t!”

Despite her beginning to freak out, the whispering didn’t stop. “Is this another thing you caused her to do, or is this really how she is?” When Henry gave another shrug as his answer, Ricken pulled his hand closer to his mouth, worried that this behavior wasn’t just something that came with the situation. “Lucina, why would we care if something was mature or not? You’re a smart girl, we know you want to read and learn, and we aren’t going to stop you from doing just that!”

She gave a small sniffle, nodding at the reassurance she’d just heard. “Thank you so much, Daddy. It really means a lot to know you support me and what I enjoy.” How she was acting seemed too strange to be something that Henry had sparked in her when he cursed her, so did she act like this behind closed doors with her actual family? Were Chrom and his wife strict parents towards their little girl, to the point that she felt scared to pursue her own interests? If that were the case, was her now having new parents a good thing?

“Hey, why don’t we stop this crying nonsense and go do something fun today?” Henry suggested, trying to steer the conversation in a new direction. “Maybe we could go out for a nice family breakfast, and then spend time together doing whatever we want, like real families always do!”

Ricken raised his eyebrows, wondering what had given Henry the idea that any sort of family did that on the regular, but Lucina seemed thrilled to hear the suggestion. She didn’t look as distraught as she had moments before, although there were still tears in the corners of her eyes, but her smile had come back in full force. “That sounds lovely, Father! I must be so lucky to have two fathers who love me as much as you both do!”

“Then it’s settled and off we’ll go!” Almost as excited about what he’d said as Lucina was, Henry looked over at Ricken’s expression and tilted his head to the side, wordlessly asking what the problem was. “Say, are you going to rain on our parade and ruin this good morning for Lucina and me? You’ve already made her cry with your silly whispering and all that.”

“My whispering?” Ricken spat out, honestly a bit shocked to hear Henry push all the blame onto him. “You were just as involved! And no, I don’t want to ruin her day, I’m just kind of interested on where you got the idea to go out. Some parent friend of yours tell you it was a good idea?”

“Nope, came up with it all on my own.” Henry beamed as he spoke, watching Ricken look back at him with complete disbelief, causing him to backpedal a bit. “…Or I might have overheard someone one time saying it was something fun to do. Why does it matter? You think I’m stealing other people’s parenting tips?”

If Lucina hadn’t been right there with him, Ricken would have told him that he did indeed think exactly that. But with the girl present, he felt throwing Henry under the bus for lying would have been wrong, so he lied and instead said, “No, why would I think that? You’re a good parent because you know what to do, not because you steal from others.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” It took a second before the other meaning of Ricken’s words really sunk in, but when Henry realized that a dig at how he’d become a “parent” had just been made, his lips formed a straight line as Ricken smirked at him. “Very funny, but this isn’t the time for your jokes. We’ve got a breakfast to attend!”

“Maybe if Daddy eats a good breakfast, he’ll grow up to be big and strong!” Lucina said with a soft laugh, causing Henry to break into his normal guffaws and chuckles, all at Ricken’s expense. “Or maybe he’s too old for that. Maybe eating good meals only works for kids. Which means that I need to eat especially well so that I can be strong like Father!”

Henry pretended to flex one of his arms, acting as if he’d have any muscles to show off. “Oh yeah, you want to be nice and strong just like me,” he laughed, before dropping his arm and moving past the somewhat oddly placed compliment. He definitely wasn’t the kind of guy that would be considered muscular or strong, although he was fit, so why would she see him in that way? Was it her idolizing her parent, or was it her remembering at least one thing about her actual father? If it was the second, some more curse work was going to be needed to make sure it didn’t happen again.

It wasn’t the time for those sorts of thoughts, though, as they did need to get going before their breakfast turned into a lunch. Thankfully, there was a café not that far from the house, one that Ricken and Henry spent quite a bit of their time at, and with the three of them going there it was going to raise the question of how well the curses worked on the world. Would they actually be able to dine in the café without anyone recognizing Lucina as the princess of Ylisse, a tall order in a country that idolized their leader and his family, or would the whole child-thievery thing be discovered within moments of entering?

The wait staff at the café was the same as it was every morning, filled with college students just trying to make ends meet. They greeted Ricken as they always did, asking about how he spent his time without having to worry about school. Not a single mention of Lucina was made to him, giving him hope that maybe the magic didn't affect them there; a hope that was quickly dashed when someone saw Henry and the girl taking their table and then proceeded to ask Ricken how life was with them.

“It's...fine,” he managed to spit out, not wanting to sound upset with the speaker but at the same time being very upset indeed. “I never would have thought that someone like that would come into my life and change it like they have.”

He was being vague while talking about Lucina, but the worker took it as him speaking about Henry instead. “Sometimes that's just how love works, kid. You find someone, fall head over heels for them, and then things happen that you would never expect.” Their voice then dropped low, so that Ricken would be the only one to hear what they had to say. “And for you two to be out and okay with everyone knowing, you're an inspiration for others who aren't so proud of their feelings. Good on you, being a shining example of what being out can do for you.”

Not sure how he was even supposed to take that, Ricken merely smiled and nodded, knowing he must have been turning red at how awkward things were. The worker pat him on the shoulder a few times before going back to work, leaving Ricken to shuffle over to his table, where Henry was waiting with a huge grin. “You missed Lucina telling a crazy story by being gone,” he said, as Ricken pulled out his chair and sat in it, burying his face in his hands once seated. “But I guess that doesn't matter, since you don't look to be down for some laughter. What's wrong?”

“Nothing, don't mind me.” Ricken wanted to tell Henry what had just happened, but he couldn't find the words or the willingness to do it. “Why doesn't Lucina just tell me the story, since I missed it the first time?”

“Anything for you, Daddy,” the girl said, while Henry tried his hardest not to laugh at the sincere way she spoke. “So as I just told Father, I had the strangest dream last night that I just remembered when we got here. I dreamt that I was the sister of the prince of Ylisse, and that he and I were playing together somewhere incredibly fancy! But he's a prince and I'm just the daughter of two incredibly fathers, so it really was just a dream.” She let out a shaky sigh. “What if I meet the prince someday though? Or, maybe, what if I've already met him? What if my dream’s come true before and I never realized it?”

“Our little girl aspires to be friends with the young prince,” Henry summed up, snorting from laughter as he did, “and that's the craziest thing I've ever heard! We've got to make it happen for her, right Ricken?”

Having expected to hear him bash the idea, it took Ricken by surprise to hear Henry condoning a meeting between the _actual_ siblings. “Er, yeah, we've got to do that.” He was only agreeing with hopes that causing the hypothetical meeting would in turn remind Lucina that she was, in fact, the princess and that the prince wasn't just a stranger but instead her younger brother. “It'll make Lucina’s life that much better if we do.”

“My thoughts exactly! She can get to be friends with royalty, while the little prince gets an older friend to teach him everything he needs to know about being amazing!” Henry wasn't thinking in terms of what kinds of disasters could take place if the two were to meet, and it showed. It took Ricken looking up from his hands with an expression that simply asked if he was serious to get him to rethink what he’d said. “Or maybe it would be best if it didn't happen. I don't know. I just try to be a good parent. Can't say I know what's right all the time!”

“Even if I don't get to meet Prince Morgan at any point, knowing there's a chance that I already did in passing is good enough for me!” Sighing happily once more, Lucina turned to look out the window at people walking down the street past the café. “Maybe he'll walk by while we’re in here! Wouldn't that be cool?”

Since him walking by would require one or both of his parents being present, the young prince only being six years old, him being out there would not be good for them at all. “It would be cool, but a kid like him’s gotta stay where he's protected and safe and all that,” Henry said with a shrug, deflating Lucina’s spirits a bit. “But maybe he'll come by, or better yet, maybe one of your other friends will walk by instead! You do have friends, don't you?”

“I...don't think I do.” Her happiness completely gone, Lucina turned back to face Henry, her eyes downcast. “I spend all my time and love on you both that I guess I never thought about actually having friends! Ooh, after we're done here, can we go somewhere kids my age might be so I can try my hand at making friends?”

Henry nodded, wanting to do what he could to cheer her back up. “Maybe not right after we finish here, but we sure can go somewhere later sometime!” He glanced over at Ricken, who was still giving him a look of needing to rethink what he was saying. “Okay, I don't get what the problem is this time, Ricken! Taking Lucina out is a good thing!”

“It is, sure, but she wants to go out after this, not just at any old time. Where are we going to take her after this? It's the middle of the week and--” He abruptly stopped speaking when something dawned on him that simply hadn't occurred to him before. “--Henry, she needs to be at school today! We can't be out and about with her!”

“...Daddy, have you forgotten that you take me out all the time during the week, because you two school me yourselves?” When Henry did the curse, he must have come up with this workaround to whatever Lucina’s education status was to keep her with them as much as possible. Either that, or she was homeschooled in her real life as well, and it was just her transferring her memories of that to her new life. “That's got to be why I don't have any friends, because I never see kids my own age.”

“I think I've got an idea for what we can do,” Henry said, trying to return to the original topic of conversation, “but there's one teensy-tiny problem with it.”

“Oh, I don't mind if there's any problems at all, as long as we're spending time together.” Lucina smiled at Henry, as he chuckled at her response. “Father, what's so funny?”

He covered his mouth to try calming himself, to no avail. “Your eagerness is so adorable, I can't help but giggle at it. The problem with my idea is that we can't do it until next week, but if you're fine with that then there's no cause for concern.” A pause, in which another idea came to him. “Speaking of _caws_ , how about we take a trip to the zoo today? That's a place that's always swarming with kids!”

“Only you would make the jump from a parenting class to the zoo,” Ricken muttered, watching how enthusiastically Henry and Lucina were now chattering about going to see the animals. “But I don't think ever showing our faces in that library when Maribelle's around is a good idea. She smells dark magic like it's got an actual smell to it! She'll rat us out before we even get a chance to set things right!”

“As if she'll know anything's different,” Henry said right back, his voice low so Lucina didn't hear him speak about such serious matters. He perked right back up to his normal volume when he returned to talking to her about their plans for a zoo trip, while Ricken shook his head at how not-seriously Henry was taking things. They had stolen a child and he really wanted to risk being caught? That was not an adult thing to do, although when did Henry do anything in an adult manner?

Once going to the zoo was fully decided on and the plans for it were made, they seemed to rush through their meal just to get going. Lucina was completely ecstatic to get to go somewhere with her dads, and Henry was pleased to be able to do something with his “child”, but Ricken wasn’t quite on board, and that sentiment didn’t change even as they made their way out to the zoo later that day. He still wasn’t going on with their carefree conversation about what fun they were going to have, because he was focused on how flaunting their stolen child out in public was their current agenda. Of all the places they were going to stumble upon some stranger who knew Lucina didn’t belong to them, the zoo was going to have to be it.

It wasn’t a stranger that found them, and they weren’t completely outed on their scheme, but someone who knew that something was amiss did see them while they were at the zoo that afternoon. It all started not long after they walked into the leafy garden that was the entrance area to the zoo, as that was when Ricken, anxiously looking around for anyone staring back at them with disapproval, noticed a pair of black-haired heads he’d seen at the library a time or two before. “Uh, Henry, don’t mean to cut this short already, but I think a certain person’s around,” he whispered into his boyfriend’s ear, but his warning was ignored as Henry was too busy already being engrossed in the animals they were walking past.

At the same time he was trying to give the warning, a young boy who wanted to be anywhere but where he was saw the girl that was with the men, his face turning from one of complete distress to one with a bit of happiness to it. “She’s not who I’d love to see on the one day I’m not stuck with Ma, but seein’ Lucy anywhere’s always a good sign,” Brady said to himself, before looking at his father, who was uninterestedly reading one of the information posts about an exhibit. “I’ll just sneak away and hopefully he won’t notice a thing. Just can’t help but wonder what she’s doin’ with those guys though…”

After making absolute sure that his father wouldn’t immediately come looking for him, Brady took a few slow steps before breaking into a close to as run as he ever would, trying to catch up with Lucina and her parents. As he got closer to them, he realized that one of the men, the redheaded one, was looking back at him quite frequently, always looking distressed when he did. Something about that man seemed familiar to him, as if he’d spent some time with him when he was a younger kid, but he shrugged the familiarity off and kept up his chase until he was mere footsteps behind them.

He could hear some of the conversation that Lucina was having with the white-haired man she was with, and something about it was striking him as odd. Honestly, in his mind, everything going on at that moment seemed a bit strange, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was. “Father,” he heard her say in a loving tone, “coming here today was a wonderful idea! I’m so glad we worked together to come up with it!”

“Oh yeah, it’s just the best,” the man replied, to which Brady frowned without realizing it. “You’re one smart cookie and I’m the great baker who helped make you so smart!” They both laughed, while he slowed down his pace behind them, trying to make sense of things. That man, she’d referred to him as her father, but he definitely wasn’t her father, was he? The last time he’d seen Lucina, which had been the day before, her father had been a tall guy with a friendly smile and a head of blue hair that matched his daughter’s. This guy might have been someone’s father, maybe, but he sure wasn’t Lucina’s.

And since he was alone, having left his own father to chase after her, maybe this guy was going to do whatever he’d done to her and take him too. “Lucy, stop for a second!” he called, hoping she’d hear him, but her and Henry didn’t stop walking, nor did they look back to see what was going on. The other guy did hesitantly look over his shoulder once more, but before he made eye contact with Brady he was already stumbling to catch back up to the others. “No, please, Lucy come back! Something’s not right with what’s goin’ on here!”

“That something might just be your lack of obedience.” Shivers went down Brady’s spine as he felt his father’s hand on his shoulder, pulling him backwards until he was standing against him. “This behavior is why your mother always insists on chaperoning our outings. Troublesome woman, but she keeps you in line.”

“Something’s not right, though,” he tried explaining, but he was silenced by the absolute lack of response his father gave him, prompting him to meekly apologize. “Sorry for runnin’ off like that. I just saw Lucy and got excited about seein’ her out here. She doesn’t get out much, livin’ the life that she does.”

“I have no recollection of anyone named ‘Lucy’ that you know, which leads me to believe that this is a cover for you chasing down someone else.” Lon’qu sighed, wishing he was anywhere but at the zoo for this conversation. “Listen, your mother might not approve of your…tastes, saying you’re too young and too immature to make those decisions, but you do not have to lie to me about wanting to chase down what you really want. Of course, I was under the impression that your little _friend_ was currently with his mother and your mother, but plans do change, I’m aware.”

Hearing his father’s somewhat approval of his romantic interest was fine and all, but the way he was acting like he’d never heard of Lucina before struck a nerve within Brady, to the point that he just had to say something about it. “But you know Lucy! She’s come over many times, because me and her are friends and—“ He heard his father exhale deeply, wanting to speak over his child but being polite enough not to, and he knew that he needed to wrap up his explanation. “—you’ve met her before, promise!”

“The only child I’ve ever allowed in our home that was labeled your friend is no longer allowed in the house per your mother’s wishes.” Lon’qu narrowed his eyes down at Brady, who was now looking up at him like the words coming out of his mouth were completely unbelievable. “It is true, though. Don’t give me that look.”

“No, it’s not true, because you’ve really met Lucy before! She’s the one with the long blue hair and the pretty smile and that crown she wears all the time.” He was demonstrating with his hands what he meant by hair length and crown, actions that Lon’qu simply ignored. “Listen to me, you’ve met her before, and somethin’ is up with her! We’ve gotta go find her again, and if you won’t come with me, I’m gonna do it myself!”

He got maybe half a step before he was being pulled back to his original position, his father not wanting him disappearing in such a public place on his own. “No, young man, you are staying with me. We will resume our exploration of the zoo, and if we just happen to come across this so-called friend of yours again, then you can show me her and I will tell you if I know her or not.”

The battle was lost, and there wasn’t anything Brady could do about it aside from silently ask Naga to put Lucina on the path in front of him again. He already knew he’d get an earful for this from his mother when he got home, if she even remembered who his friend was, at any rate. Why did it seem like he was the only one who remembered her? “That sounds good, I guess. Let’s get back to lookin’ at animals and stuff,” he said, defeat in his voice, although his hopes were still high that something good would come of this.

At the same time, somewhere halfway across the zoo, Lucina was plastered to the glass of one of the exhibits, trying her hardest to get close to the animals within. “You know, she acts like she’s never been out like this before,” Henry remarked, nudging Ricken in the arm. “Maybe me taking her like I did was the best thing I could have done for her. Poor girl, never knowing what it’s like to see animals like this!”

“She’s probably been here a million times, all for educational purposes.” Ignoring the nudging, Ricken rolled his eyes as it only persisted. “Stop hitting me, by the way, but seriously, whatever you did to her to make her yours really did a number on her. She’s acting like a small kid, not the princess she’s supposed to be.”

“Who said a princess can’t act like a little kid?” Henry snorted, continuing with pestering Ricken despite being told to do otherwise. “I think it makes her more fun. Can’t have us raising a child who’s super stuffy and stuck-up, you know. I want a kid who’s like me, not like you!”

“Oh yes, because someone who actually thinks about the consequences of their actions is such a bad standard to have for a kid.” Finally breaking and grabbing Henry’s arm so that he couldn’t hit him anymore, there was a moment where Ricken considered just walking away and leaving Henry and Lucina there just so that he didn’t have to deal with them anymore. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it, not when he looked at Henry and was reminded of why he loved this man despite his very obvious shortcomings: his soft white hair that flew every which way, his eyes that crinkled closed whenever he laughed (which was almost always), the smile that looked simultaneously so deserving of a punch and a kiss…

“I love when you start daydreaming about me when we’re in public,” Henry said, simply to interrupt what Ricken was thinking about. “It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Kind of like if I was a bear, but the bear’s what makes up my insides, not my outsides.” His statement was finished with a loud laugh, having found nothing but humor in the situation, while Ricken, his face lighting up in shame of being called out in such a way, dropped the arm he was holding to bury his face in his hands. “Oh come on, Ricken, it wasn’t that bad. It was actually cute to see you drooling over me like that.”

“I was not drooling!” he snapped, his voice muffled by his hands. “And you weren’t supposed to be watching me, anyway! Eyes on the kid you stole to keep others from stealing her!”

Despite knowing he wasn’t going to be seen, Henry waved a hand at the idea. “No one’s going to try stealing her, because to everyone around here, she’s a nobody! She’s just our kid now, not anyone else’s. We’ve gone over this.”

“Except somebody knows she’s not ours, somebody who isn’t me or you.” His hands dropped from his face, the color in his cheeks back to normal, and as Henry looked at him with a questioning expression, Ricken realized that he must not have heard a single thing from earlier in the trip. “Maribelle’s son saw us when we got here, and he was chasing us down, as if he recognized that she didn’t belong with us. He knows something’s wrong.”

“Oh, sure he does. He’s just a boy, he won’t actually know a thing. Stop being such a downer on the fun, Ricken.” Politely putting his hand on Ricken’s shoulder, Henry went back to being happy as always as he quickly moved past the topic. “Now let’s get to looking at other animals, shall we? I think we’re almost at the bird enclosure, and that’s my favorite part. That and the wolves. Always wanted to know what it’s like for one of them to rip my arm off. Maybe today’s the day we’ll find out!”

“I’d rather it not be. I rather like you in one whole piece.” He accepted that his warnings weren’t going to be acknowledged, so the only thing left for Ricken to do was to continue playing along. “And I’m sure Lucina likes you this way too.”

“I like who what way?” the girl asked, having pried herself off the glass to approach her dads. “And what was that about birds? I like birds quite a bit.” Lucina’s face lit up as she thought of some bird species in particular that she felt she liked, one that mentioning to her dad was enough to get them ready to keep moving on. “Especially cute little robins! They’re simply the—hey, why are you both walking away?” She had to abruptly stop her explanation of why the birds were her favorite to catch up to her fathers, one of whom was realizing that maybe some of her real-life memories were seeping through in strange ways, while the other just really wanted to get to show his child the birds she liked.

As she was leaving the exhibit, that was when Brady and his father came walking in, the young boy positive he’d just heard his friend’s voice inside the room. When he got there and saw no signs of her or those men she’d been with, he walked over to the wall and leaned against it, panting as he’d been moving quickly to try and catch her. “You’re ruining your own zoo experience,” Lon’qu told him, looking around at the completely empty room. “This girl you’re chasing, she doesn’t exist. I was unaware you had an imaginary friend, but it seems that might be the case.”

“She’s real, and I heard her in here, but they must have been leavin’ as we came in.” Taking a few moments to catch his breath, Brady did as his father was doing and looked around, seeing a familiar golden hairpiece sitting against the glass of the exhibit. “And she’s gotta come back, because that’s her crown right there,” he said, pointing towards the trinket. “I know Lucy won’t go far without that.”

For several minutes, they stood there waiting for the girl to come back for what she’d left, but she simply didn’t. As they watched the animals behind the glass do their normal daily activities, no people came into the room to join them, leaving Lon’qu to believe that his son really was making things up. But as he started to make another comment about the possibility of an imaginary friend, Henry came into the room, looking around for something. “She said she left it here? But I didn’t even know she still _had_ the crown! What kind of child thief…” His voice trailed off when he realized he wasn’t the only person in the room, seeing the father and son up against the wall and freezing when he saw they were both staring at him. “Er, hello there, gentlemen! Anyone seen a little fake crown in here?”

“It’s right over there, sir,” Lon’qu replied, pointing towards where it was resting. “If that’s what you are looking for, anyway.”

Henry followed the finger’s direction to the crown that was still sitting against the glass, and he clasped his hands together happily when he saw it. “Oh sweet, thanks! My daughter left it there on accident and she wanted me to come check for it! Glad to see you two were keeping tabs on it!” He smiled at the two, before realizing who exactly they were, and once it dawned on him that one of them was the person Ricken had been warning him about, he made quick work of grabbing the crown and leaving the room. “Well, this has been a blast, but I’ve got to get back to my family! Thanks for not stealing this thing!”

“Why would we steal a child’s plastic crown?” There was no reason for Lon’qu to have suspected that the crown was one belonging to real royalty, but Brady knew that it was an actual crown, not a plastic one, and he also knew that following that guy out of the room would take him back to Lucina. Like before, though, he made it barely a step before he was stopped. “Brady, do not chase that man down. He merely came back for his child’s belonging, something a good parent does.”

“But that’s the guy that Lucy was with!” he retorted, before swallowing down hard and blatantly disobeying his father by heading towards the exit that man had just gone through. A few feet outside of the doorway, the man and his smaller companion were both standing, the crown being waved around in the air as they talked. He couldn’t hear every word of what they were saying, but “stealing a child” was said multiple times by both of them, only cementing Brady’s knowledge that something was off about them and their relationship with his friend.

As he kept watching, he saw the two of them kiss for quite some time, a sight that brought hope to his little heart, only to break apart abruptly. “You really need to work on being more careful about keeping this secret, Henry,” the other man said, the name sticking in Brady’s mind as something he needed to remember. “Why, someone could be watching us right now, and who knows if they might know what’s going on.”

“I told you, do not chase that man down.” Two firm hands grabbing him and pulling him back into the room, Brady knew that he couldn’t fight against his father’s wishes any longer. “What do you think you’re doing, trying to follow strangers and hunt down imaginary people who only exist in your mind? You could be kidnapped.”

Under his breath, Brady mentioned how that’s what had happened to Lucina, but out loud to his father he instead said, “I know I could, and I guess I shouldn’t be actin’ so bad today. Just, uh, please don’t tell Ma about any of this. I don’t want her gettin’ mad when she wasn’t even here to see it.”

“Real cheeky, thinking to ask not to let your mother know of your behavior. However, I would much rather not involve her in this, as she’ll find a way to blame me for what you did, so this shall remain our little secret.” There was a pause in which Brady sighed in relief, his father gruffly chuckling at the sound. “If she wasn’t such a bothersome woman, there would be no hope for keeping this from her, but I prefer to not have her meddling in affairs she will take the wrong way.”

“Keepin’ this between us is good enough for me,” Brady replied, thankful that his father’s disdain of women was easy to manipulate. “As long as Ma never finds out about me bein’ bad and givin’ her another thing to be protective of me about, we’re good.” In reality, he just didn’t want his mother finding out that he had suspicions about his friend’s parents not being who they were supposed to be, not until he could explain himself beyond “because that’s not how I remember it being.” If he was going to bring this up to her, he was going to need to think hard, do some reading, and come up with evidence.

He was going to need some time, and time wasn’t exactly a good thing.


	3. Chapter 3

Her eyes surveying the library for any sign of Henry, Ricken, or Lucina, Maribelle was quite shocked but disappointed when she saw not even a hair on any of their heads. “He shows up to watch my class and plot his scheme, but the second he no longer needs to try stealing a child he completely disappears! Three weeks now without a sighting of that bastard!”

“What's got you so uppity this time, Maribelle?” Lon’qu, sounding unamused as always with his wife, didn't even give her a chance to explain herself and her slightly-deranged sounding mutterings before he continued speaking. “What, has someone said or done something to damage your fragile ego? What an easy thing to do, but one that I’m expected to be concerned about every time.”

“No, nothing of the sort! I'm simply disappointed that someone who regularly attends my class has once again not shown up.” She gave a sigh that she purposely drew out several seconds longer than needed, hoping to prompt him to inquire further.

The inquiry he did give was not the one she was expecting, nor was it one she wanted. “Is it one of those single men? I should have expected you would begin to become attached to one of those gentlemen. What can he provide you with that I won't? Unprompted embraces? Unfounded compliments?” The way he spoke was flat and mostly emotionless, as usual, and she honestly couldn't tell if he was joking or being serious with what he was saying. “None of those men would put up with you as well as I do, so don't bother lusting after any of them.”

“Then it must be good that who I'm upset about is not a single man,” she snapped, finally taking his words as sincere. “In fact, she's not a man at all, and my concern for her is more motherly than anything else!”

“Who would have figured, someone running a parenting class becoming attached to one of her pupils? Be careful not to steal her from her parents. We don't need another child.” Maribelle was well-aware that Lon’qu had no idea who she was talking about, nor did he know about how their current topic of discussion had actually been stolen by who currently had her. This wasn't the way to try and goad him into saying more to find out about that not-so-fun fact, though, and she knew it. He watched as she nodded in agreement with his statement and cracked the smallest of smiles. “The one child we do have is enough. Speaking of him, did we bring him with us today or not?”

Turning to motion towards who should have been standing right beside her, Maribelle found that Brady wasn't there. “We did bring him, I swear, but he must have run off to talk to someone.” Her eyes narrowed as she now scanned the area looking for her child, rather than someone else’s kid. “Let's hope whomever he got distracted by, they're not anyone we've forbidden him from talking to.”

“Last I checked, I never once forbade him from speaking to anyone. Perhaps if you learned to control him better, you wouldn’t feel the need to keep him from talking to who he wants to.” The look she gave him after that comment was angered, her having stopped her search just to wordlessly show him her disapproval, and he grumbled in response. “Well, it’s true. If you had just told him certain behaviors weren’t approved of, would this be a problem?”

“I’ve told him time and time again that speaking to _him_ isn’t allowed, despite my close friendship with that wretched boy’s mother. He knows that’s the rule. It’s you allowing him to do whatever he wants that’s instilled this behavior within him, and I’m putting my foot down in regards to it!” To illustrate her point, Maribelle stomped down one of her fancily-dressed feet, the clacking of her heel echoing on the floor. “Why, I will set aside my friendship with Lissa in order to make sure that Brady is never pulling a stunt such as this one again!”

Lon’qu rolled his eyes, shaking his head as he did. “Have you ever wondered why it is that he does things such as this? Your methods of parenting are despicable and should disqualify you from being able to teach a class to other parents.” His words were falling on deaf ears, as Maribelle was once again looking around for her son, causing Lon’qu to grumble something along the lines of “set your priorities in order, you crazy woman” before he went to find his usual seat there in the library. This left Maribelle there on her own, searching without moving, before she found him sitting at one of the tables, a book out in front of him.

“That’s odd,” she remarked, as she watched him flip through some of the pages. “Brady has never shown an interest in reading anything on his own before. While I’m happy to see him doing that, it’s still concerning…” She clicked her tongue disapprovingly before beginning to walk in his direction, pushing past any person standing in her way without an apology. When she reached his table, he glanced up at her to see who had joined him, immediately looking right back to his book once he saw it was his mother. “What do you think you’re doing over here, my dearest child? Catching up on some novel reading?”

“No, Ma, I’m actually readin’ about the royal family.” He closed the book for a second to show that it was a for-kids biography of the family in power in Ylisse, just to open it right back to the picture-covered page he’d been on. “Remember how I said something didn’t feel right ‘bout Lucy when I saw her at the zoo? I think I’ve figured out what that was.”

Now Maribelle was completely aware that it was possible that Brady had known that Lucina had been stolen from her family through magic, as he had been holding her enchanted parasol when the cursing had happened. She hadn’t taken his suspicions of her from a few weeks ago as proof that he did know something, though, merely chalking the talk up to her ignoring him while they were out. “What is it, dear? What do you think it was?”

“Look at this picture here, it just isn’t right.” Pointing to the full-page and fully colored image on one of the pages, it was clear that someone had been magically erased from it. “And Lucy’s got blue hair like the prince and his dad, and she looks a lot like ‘em too. What if she’s some kind of, uh, lost princess or somethin’? Ma, is that even possible?”

Drawing one of the chairs and sitting in it to face her son, Maribelle gave a small nod. “It most certainly is possible. Do you notice how no one remembers she exists, aside from us?” When he said that he did, she knew that he was going to be most helpful in her unraveling the curse keeping the girl from her rightful family. “Those men that have her, they used some very illegal magic to change the world to make her theirs, and as the only people other than them to know where she belongs, we have to get them to change it back. Are you following me so far, Brady?”

“Sure am, Ma,” he replied, turning the page in the book to a larger picture of the royal family, one that involved a few members of the non-core family. His eyes drifted to the image of a young boy that looked to be roughly his own age, something that Maribelle noticed and shrieked at, slamming the book closed on her son’s hand while people turned to stare at them both. “Hey, what was that for? I was just lookin’ to see where Lucy belonged in that picture, I swear!”

“There will be no swearing tolerated in this conversation!” Trying to collect herself after her minor freak-out, Maribelle looked around the room at everyone who was now focused on them, hoping to find a distraction to show her son to keep him from going back to that picture. Her chosen distraction was a girl with long orange pigtails that she’d seen come to the parenting classes with her mother a time or two before. While she knew this girl had a most unpleasant personality from the few times she’d tried instructing her, she also knew that she would be a good prop for the distraction at hand. “Now Brady, why don’t you spend the time talking to that lovely girl over there, rather than dwelling on the case of Lucina and the dark magic surrounding her?”

Brady looked to the very girl that his mother was motioning towards, shrugged, and went to reopen the book, only for Maribelle to slam it again on his hand. “No thanks, not interested in anyone with that hair color,” he said as he winced in pain. “More like, not interested in anythin’ about her, but you don’t wanna hear me sayin’ that, do you Ma?”

“I sure do not want to hear you say anything of that sort.” Maribelle drew in a deep breath, exhaling it slowly as she tried to keep her composure mostly in check as she finally addressed the elephant in the room regarding her son. “I just want to know I’ve raised my little boy to like girls, so that someday I will find myself surrounded in grandbabies. I don’t want you to be exploring what it’s like to be interested in boys, not when you’re still so young.”

“But you want me likin’ girls and wantin’ babies even though I’m young? Ma, trust me, me maybe likin’ him isn’t that big of a deal.” Going to open the book once more, this time Brady wasn’t met with the resistance of his mother, something he appreciated as he went back to the big family picture. “Here, this is where Lucy should be in this, I think,” he explained, going back to his original point after all, before veering back to the other topic as he moved his finger across the image to the boy in it that wasn’t the prince, “and here’s her cousin that you’re just gonna have to accept that I like.”

Maribelle’s eye twitched, but she didn’t say anything in regards to what her son had just told her, instead going back to trying to push him to talk to the other girl. “That’s lovely, my dear, but from what I understand, that little girl needs friends, and talking to her would most certainly make her day. Wouldn’t you like to make someone happy, for once in your life?”

“Sure would, and it’s not gonna be her. Or you if you keep treatin’ me like this.” Mere seconds after the words left his mouth and he heard the gasp his mother gave, Brady regretted his decision of saying anything like that. “I-I didn’t mean it like that! Gods, that’s not how I’m supposed to talk to you, Ma, and I’m so sorry that I just said that!” He got up from his chair and went around the table, arms opened wide for a hug, but she rejected him completely. “Please, I’m so sorry for that!”

“The only way I’ll accept this apology is if you be a good boy and do as I’ve asked you to.” He knew that she was, naturally, referring to where his romantic curiosities were, but there was nothing he was going to do about those, not because of this. However, he knew he could pretend for a little while to please her, and that was exactly what he decided on doing. Watching her son nearly dragging his feet as he walked towards the girl she’d been trying to get him to interact with filled Maribelle with some sort of pride, but she knew that it wasn’t going to last for very long, not when she could read her son just like a book. “How dare that boy show such disrespect towards me? When we get home later, we are having a family meeting about respect and how all women deserve it!”

Still grumbling, she picked up the book he’d been looking through and tucked it under her arm, before making her way to her normal spot there in the library to watch as people came upstairs for the class. Watching the different kinds of people, all with different family lives and whatnot, helped take her mind off her own frustrations and failures with her own child, to the point that soon she wasn’t thinking about Brady much at all anymore. Of course, she would occasionally glance over in his direction and watch him flounder in conversation with that girl, but that was to be expected of him. The only girl he’d ever been good at talking to was Lucina, and not even Naga might have known where she was at that point.

Her mind back to the poor missing princess, Maribelle couldn’t help but give a wary smile to Chrom and his wife when he saw them and their son come upstairs. The little prince was chattering a million words per minute about how much fun he was going to have in the first class he’d attended since he’d celebrated his birthday, and as he began talking about how he hoped learning about kids would make his parents give him a sibling, it made Maribelle’s smile become even sadder. Morgan would be delighted to know that he did have a sister, but that she’d been stolen from him, but she couldn’t exactly walk over to the family and tell them that wonderful fact.

The only way she’d be able to remind them that Lucina was there was if the girl somehow ended up at the library, and Maribelle was beginning to become certain that it wasn’t going to happen. “Those men know I’m watching for them and they’re doing all they can to keep her away from me,” she muttered, before a small, shaky cough beside her caught her attention. She looked over to the source of the noise, surprised to see the black-haired head of her son there next to her, hanging as if the boy was ashamed. “Brady, dearest, what are you doing? What happened to talking to the girl?”

“She started fightin’ with her mom and I didn’t want to hear it so I came back.” He tilted his head up, looking into his mother’s face with his gray eyes that glanced around anxiously. “Then I heard you talkin’ about Lucy again and it made me remember, at the zoo when I saw her last, one of her ‘dads’ called the other one some name I couldn’t remember until now. I’ve known Lucy a long time, and I _know_ she doesn’t have a dad named Henry.” He had actually never forgotten the name, but he hadn’t thought of a good way to bring it up until just then, after listening to the other girl talk about her own parents by their names. Such disrespect wasn’t going to be brought up with his mother, though, not unless he wanted to accidentally subject everyone to a class on parental respect. “So what do we do about this, Ma? We’ve gotta fix things, for Lucy and for her real parents.”

“That we do, but there’s nothing we can do unless those men or Lucina show their faces around here, and I don’t think that will be happening. Not today, not ever.” Not normally one to accept defeat, Maribelle sighed heavily, grabbing her son in a big hug to try and bring her spirits back up. “Just knowing that you know things aren’t right here is all I could ask for, aside from being able to fix them, that is.”’

While in the hug, he could feel that she was awkwardly holding his book under one arm, and so as carefully as he could without disturbing her, he took the book back for himself. “What are you gonna do to fix everything if you can, Ma? Is there anything you can do?”

“Like I said before, we have to convince them to change back their magic, which I’m sure won’t happen.” Pursing her lips together, Maribelle considered her other options in the situation, none of which would look good on her public image. But what mattered more, her image or the princess being back with her parents? “The other idea I have requires a bit of magic of my own, as well as some well-placed counters for dark magic. Brady, by chance, do you have my parasol with you?”

“Was I supposed to?” he replied, looking down at the book he’d taken back from his mother. “I didn’t grab it from home before we left, ‘cause you normally do that.”

“No matter. Lon’qu!” Breaking the hug up, she waited for her husband to drag himself over to the conversation, and no sooner than he was at her side did she start ordering him around to do something. “Run home and grab my parasol. This is a time-sensitive matter, and if you don’t do it right bad things relating to a young, scared little girl could happen.”

He grumbled, “What is it with you two and caring about young girls? First it’s Brady and his imaginary friend at the zoo, and today it’s you and some girl who doesn’t even exist. How lovely it must be, living in the fantasy world you two exist in.” Even with his disdain, he still said he would do as ordered, descending down the stairs a lot quicker than someone so unhappy logically would.

“What was that about an imaginary friend?” Maribelle asked, not actually having heard that story before then. “Was he being facetious, or uninformed, or what?”

Biting his lip, Brady hesitated for a moment, asking himself if he really wanted to tell his mother the truth or not, before deciding that now was as good a time as any to tell her. “He thought Lucy wasn’t real when we were at the zoo, and I kinda chased her down a time or two and he thought I was just runnin’ off to be a bad kid. Which I wasn’t, because I was doin’ work for this without knowin’ that’s what I was doin’.”

“Running off from your father in a public place?” The shock in her voice was genuine, and Brady knew that telling her everything might have been a bad idea after all. “Why, someone could have abducted you! Not everyone does their child-stealing through secret dark magic, after all, and just knowing that my baby could have been taken because of his own stupidity, why, that breaks my heart!”

She was once again wrapping herself around Brady, not having any intentions of letting go of him this time, and he sighed when he felt her squeezing him tightly. “Ma, please, I wasn’t gonna get taken by anyone in that place. And I was runnin’ off to check on Lucy, not hidin’ or anything like that. It was all fine.”

“It certainly was not all fine! They could have taken you and you would have been gone faster than anyone could have reacted. And let me tell you, your father is quite fast at reaction times! Why, did you not see how quickly he came running when I called for him?” Maribelle shook Brady as she hugged him, while he tried squirming away with no luck. “He would have been no match to potential kidnappers, and as a mother, it worries me that my child would endanger himself like that!”

“Lemme guess, when we get home, after the talk on respect and women, you’re gonna yap at me about staying by my parents’ side in public at all times?” Brady flatly asked, not expecting his mother to honor his question with any sort of response. He was shocked when she ceased shaking him to look him in the eye and inhale deeply, taking his sassy question as a personal attack. “It was just a joke, Ma. I know I’m supposed to stay with you when we’re out.”

“Then why didn’t you do it?” The shaking resumed, much harder than before, and people were beginning to stare. “You’re a reckless little boy sometimes, and despite my best attempts at teaching you otherwise, you still walk on the side of danger on occasion. Doesn’t being proper and cultured mean anything to you?”

He squirmed a bit more, eventually choosing to stomp down on his mother’s foot to get out of her arms. “Sure, bein’ cultured means something, sometimes, but knowin’ how to play violin and play chess and that sort of stuff is just boring to a kid. He’s got to have fun sometimes, and sometimes that fun comes in tryin’ to find out what’s weird about his friend!” Watching as Maribelle stared at him with pain in her eyes from how hard he’d stomped on her, he turned to look at the people looking at them and their conversation. “Er, Ma, we’ve got lots of people watchin’ us. Can we keep talkin’ about this at home?”

Not one to willingly let her reputation be ruined, she silently agreed to the request and tried saving face with everyone by offering to start the class then. At some point after everyone had taken their seats and were beginning to listen to her instruction, Lon’qu came back into the room, carrying with him a parasol that Maribelle quickly snatched from him—first smacking her son with it once it was in her hands, then passing it off to him for protection from some unseen force. She might have been teaching, and earning laughs from her class, but she was still waiting for the possible appearance of those child thieves. They had to be prepared at any given moment, and giving her son the parasol was the best kind of preparation she could think of.

Class ended as quickly as it started, with no sign of the offenders or their child, and hopes were dwindling fast. It might just have not been meant for Maribelle to be the one to put an end to the nonsense, once and for all; but the moment she started wondering if she was putting too much stock on one of them being dumb, familiar faces came up into the second floor of the library. Familiar faces that she had things to settle with.

* * *

Going to the library that day hadn’t been part of the plan, it really hadn’t. Lucina had been asking for almost a week about having another family outing much like the zoo trip, and due to Ricken’s insistence that they be careful about taking her places, Henry had denied the request for as long as he could. There came a point, though, that the girl changed her tone when she asked from sweet to forceful, like she demanded they do something, and once she got to that point there was no denying her any longer.

“I can’t help it,” Henry explained, as he pulled one of his shoes on before they left. “There’s something about the way she asked that last time that was just so impossible to ignore. It was like she was channeling her inner princess and trying to boss me around!”

“Her _inner_ princess? You mean what she’s supposed to be. She’s going back to her original personality.” Taking a few seconds to let what he’d just said sink in, Ricken smacked his own forehead in a moment of frustration. “Oh gods, Henry, she’s going to realize any moment now that she doesn’t belong with us! We’ve got to fix this now!”

Moving on to putting his other shoe on his foot, Henry contemplated the suggestion for a moment before shrugging. “Or I can just curse her again and then we won’t have to worry about it. Besides, there’s no way she’s going to remember. She’s been ours for weeks now and she’s going to stay ours forever, and no one knows the difference. Now you better get dressed too, even though I love seeing you as undressed as you are right now. We can’t have you getting in trouble for public nudity while we’re out with Lucina. She might get the wrong idea about her dearest _daddy_.”

“If I don’t bother with getting dressed, I don’t have to be there when this all falls apart in your face.” Cringing at the name that had been used, Ricken knew that he had to go out with Henry and Lucina to be there for them both, no matter what was going to happen. “But you’re right, have to be a good role model for our child. Even if she isn’t ours.”

“That’s the spirit!” Henry stood up from where he’d been sitting, fully prepared for his day out, while Ricken slowly brought himself to get ready. “Wow, you sure look a lot better without clothes,” he commented as he watched the act of dressing happen. “I mean, can’t complain when you’ve got them on, but when you don’t…”

“I look like a permanently twelve-year-old boy, that’s what I look like without clothes on. Are you sure you want to be sweet-talking me right now?” Hearing the non-committal noise his boyfriend gave at the question, Ricken gave a long sigh. “You’re hopeless. If there’s anything this parenting business has done to you, it’s made you a lot worse with your hitting on me. You used to do it so much less and it meant something, but now it doesn’t mean much at all.”

“So it’s kind of like my magic then, huh?” Naturally, Henry was relating one of the things in life he enjoyed, that being Ricken, to one of the other things he enjoyed, which was dabbling in dark magic. “It’s only good when I use it a little bit. Or, er, in your opinion, not at all. Because it’s ‘illegal’ or something. Whatever.”

Instead of sighing again, Ricken took in a deep breath to keep himself from saying the first thing that came to mind at Henry’s words. “If you weren’t so big on the illegal kinds of magic, I would be fine with you using magic,” he chose to say, not wanting to start any fights at the current moment. “You know, there are lots of people here in Ylisse that use legal magic, like me and Maribelle and—“ He slapped himself again, remembering his blonde friend who was most likely out for their blood. “—Henry, we’re not going out today. No way, no how.”

“But we’ve got to,” Henry retorted, a whine to his voice. “I promised Lucina we would, and a good father like me doesn’t go back on their promises, even if some law-loving woman will do what she can to ruin me being a good father if she finds me. It’s not like she’s going to manage to do anything, though, not when I have dark magic and she doesn’t.”

For the third time in a matter of minutes, Ricken smacked his face, dragging his hand down over his eyes, nose, and mouth as he regretted every decision he’d ever made that had led to him being in this exact position. “I hope you’re aware that your magic doesn’t bother her. She’s got a reputation for sniffing out dark magic for a reason. We’ve gone over this!”

“We have?” There was genuine confusion in Henry’s voice as he asked, and when Ricken reminded him of the many times they’d discussed how Maribelle knew what she knew about dark magic, he started to laugh. “Oh, right, we have! That stupid umbrella of hers does all the dirty work and then her head does the easy stuff. Someone cast a curse at her? Why not look for who’s got a tome in front of them? Easy work right there.”

“You’re completely hopeless when it comes to keeping up this curse.” Despite his mind telling him not to go out that day, Ricken had somehow managed to get mostly ready, and was finally at the point of getting his own shoes on. “Everyone’s going to find out what’s going on and it’s going to ruin you.”

“You know, I hear that Maribelle likes doing that to people,” Henry said, continuing on with his laughter, “and I’m going to take so much joy in not letting her do just that.”

“Unintentionally, right?” The laughter that picked up in intensity after he asked that did not help Ricken’s insecurity with the situation. “Henry, please, you can’t be serious about wanting to willingly go toe-to-toe with her when she’s always had the upper hand. Today, when we’re out, we’re not going anywhere near anywhere she might be. That’s all I ask, if you really insist we go out with Lucina.”

Henry contemplated accepting the request for a solid half-second before ignoring it entirely. “I’ll take us wherever I feel like taking us. Maybe it’ll be to the zoo again. Or maybe it’ll be to a crime scene. But no promises on Maribelle not being anywhere we might be. Especially not on the crime scene part.” His deathly-serious tone as he spoke his last sentence was enough to make Ricken become completely unnerved by what was happening, but when he went right back to his playful self moments later, it was hard to keep with not being on board. “I was thinking we go out and just have a fun dad-and-dad-and-daughter day. Sound good with you? Or do I need to make another Maribelle dying joke to get you to laugh?”

“Talking about my friend dying isn’t going to ever make me laugh, but knowing that it’s a joke makes it a bit better, I suppose.” Ricken forced a smile in his boyfriend’s direction, while Henry gave a cheesy grin back. “Let’s get this over with. Just keep in mind, we’re doing this for Lucina.”

“For Lucina, definitely.” Without another word, Henry grabbed Ricken and hugged him for a minute or two, only letting go when they heard the young girl outside their room, asking when it was time to leave. That was their cue to get going on their daily adventure, one that took them through different stores and places that they’d never explored before. Since there wasn’t any inherent harm in walking through a world that saw this princess as just another girl, there was no need to be overly careful with what they did.

Until they were walking down the street and the brightly-lit façade to the library caught Lucina’s eye. “I could always use a new book or two to read at night,” she said, tugging both her dads’ arms in the direction of the library. “Come on, let’s go in and see what they have! I love libraries!”

“We can’t deny her this, you know.” Allowing himself to be dragged by the girl, Henry couldn’t stop himself from laughing as he watched Ricken’s facial expression go from one of acceptance to one of dread very quickly. “Hey, don’t look at me like it’s my bad idea leading us in here! Lucina’s having the idea here, not me!”

“But you could at least say something to stop her!” Ricken nearly hissed back, only gentling his tone because he didn’t want Lucina to think they were fighting behind her. “What if Maribelle’s here like she is every week? We’re going to be toast! You’re going to be banished and what then? What good comes from that?”

Henry playfully rolled his eyes. “I already told you, Ricken, she’s not going to find out a thing. And if she does find out, she’s not going to get to do anything about it. Stop being so worried and live a little!”

They were to the door, Lucina letting go of them to push her way into the building, and the very moment his arm wasn’t being held, Ricken contemplated turning and getting as far away from the scene as possible. The only thing that stopped him was not Henry’s pleading look or Lucina’s excitement about where she was, but rather the realization that even if he did get away, he was going to be going down with his boyfriend no matter what. They were inexplicably linked in this mess, even if all he’d ever done was try and convince Henry not to do anything. “I’ll live just fine once I know I can’t get in trouble for your hair-brained schemes, which wouldn’t happen if you just listened to me about anything!”

“For being someone so small, you sure do hold a lot of pent-up rage at me in your body.” Henry grinned, watching Ricken’s face now turn to one of exasperation. “Maybe once we’re home after Lucina gets her books, we can work on helping you with that.” He had to resist going any dirtier, but the eyebrow waggle he gave as he spoke was enough to make Ricken consider leaving after all.

“Father, Daddy, where do you think the best books in this place are?” Lucina asked, oblivious to the conversation the men had just been having. “I think I want something historical, or maybe something more recent but about real events. Do you think there’s any books about our royalty in this place?” Without missing a beat, as well as not knowing why it was a bad idea, one of the library workers who had overheard what the girl had asked told them all that those sorts of books would be on the second floor of the library. “Oh, why thank you so much! Come on, let’s go upstairs!”

Henry went without question, but Ricken lingered on the main floor, watching the two go towards the staircase and start ascending it. “It’s almost like he’s trying to lead her straight to where Maribelle is,” he said to himself as he watched them begin making their way upstairs. “But why would he be doing that, aside from being so sure he’s going to put her in her place by facing her?” His eyes went wide as he thought more about it, knowing that whatever was going to potentially transpire on the second floor was not going to end well for anyone, and so he started to chase them down to try and talk them out of it.

By the time he was close enough to Lucina to grab her arm, they were already up to the last couple of stairs before the upper landing, and waiting there at the top was none other than Maribelle, her arms crossed over her chest as she glared down the three. “It’s about time you decide to show your faces around here again,” she commented, her eyes focusing most heavily on Lucina, checking to make sure the girl was in fine condition. “Why, you’ve had me so worried as of late. My favorite student, gone missing from class! I was devastated when she didn’t show up, and now she’s here, late, but here!”

“Who’s this lady talking to?” Lucina looked at Maribelle, rather confused at what the blonde was going on about. “Excuse me, miss, but do you know where the books on the royal family are? We came upstairs so I could check a few out for the week.”

Taken aback that the girl was speaking to her in such a manner, Maribelle had to resist acting on her first instinct when responding. Rather than being snappy about how Lucina should have known who she was, she decided to play it off and come up with an answer that would hopefully lead to more people realizing something was off. “I do indeed know where the books are, but let me tell you a secret,” she said, leaning in close to the girl. “My son has probably the best book of all right now, and I’m sure if you asked him to see it, he would be happy to allow you to.”

“Wow, thank you!” Lucina cupped her face with her hands as she looked around the room for who would be this woman’s son, eventually heading off in the right direction once Maribelle pointed her in it. Brady was sitting at one of the tables, his eyes longingly focused on the big picture of the ruling family, when she came walking up to him. “Hello there, your mother sent me over here to borrow the book you have, and so I want to do just that.”

“Get your own copy of the book, I’m already usin’ this one.” Without lifting his eyes from the page, Brady motioned for the unwanted newcomer to leave him alone, but rather than leaving, she pulled out the chair next to his and sat down in it, carefully reaching for the book to try and take it. “I said I’m usin’ this one!” he snapped, glaring up at whoever was there—and gasping when he saw who it was. “Lucy, it’s you!”

“No one calls me Lucy, but I suppose that’s me, yes.” She was still moving the book over for herself, ignoring how Brady’s jaw had dropped as he looked at her. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m really curious about what your book is about. I rather enjoy hearing about royalty.”

“B-but you’re royalty, Lucy! Don’t you get tired of hearin’ about yourself all the time?” Brady was completely shocked to be sitting next to his friend after everything that had happened. Judging by the way she reacted to his comment (which was to look over at him with a blank stare), she didn’t know a single thing was weird about her existence, meaning that it was his time to explain everything he could to her. “Look, it’s kinda weird, and I ain’t exactly sure I know what’s goin’ on, but me and Ma agree that you’ve been taken from your family or somethin’ like that.”

“That’s odd, because my fathers are over there, speaking with your mother right now.” They both looked to the scene she’d just described, and true to her word, Henry and Ricken were in the middle of conversation with Maribelle, the contents of which they couldn’t hear. “What makes you think I’m a princess? The compliment is quite nice to hear.”

He thought of which words to use to explain, since the ones he’d already chosen didn’t work, but he ultimately decided to change the subject entirely. “Do you even know who I am, Lucy? I mean, I know you, so you’ve gotta know me, right?”

“This is true, I must know you if you’re already so friendly with me!” She narrowed her eyes as she looked Brady over, trying to place a name to the face, finding the problem that she didn’t know the face at all. “Hm, let’s see, you are…” As she thought of a good answer, her eyes drifted down to his lap, where his mother’s parasol was sitting. “Right! Umbrella boy, that’s who you are!”

“It’s not an umbrella,” he calmly said, his heart breaking at the words his friend had just spoken, “and I thought you knew better than to call it that, Lucy. Remember that time I showed you and your parents it? You thought it was the coolest thing ever that day, and I made sure you knew it was a parasol, not a dumb umbrella.”

“There’s a difference?” She seemed shocked at the notion, but before Brady could break into explaining the very-real differences to her once again, she had a thought come upon her that she hadn’t entertained in a few weeks, relating to the last thing she’d heard before the curse had hit her. “…You’re right, there is one. This blocks light, while a simple umbrella blocks rain. You must think me stupid for that mistake.”

“I don’t think anyone stupid for anythin’ like that. I hear Ma correctin’ people about what this is all the time.” Brady shrugged, patting the parasol like it was a pet sitting there. “Besides, I can tell somethin’ ain’t quite right with your head right now, so we’re all good.”

“What do you mean by that?” That was when he motioned towards the book, her eyes drifting towards the picture on the open page, with its gaping spot where someone had been removed. “Oh, this is quite a lovely family portrait of the royal family! Bound together by blood, as well as a neat mark that each member has somewhere on their body.” As she spoke about the mark, Brady could have sworn she was moving to rub at her eye, which had been known to be where her own mark was, but her hand stopped once she got to her jaw. “I hear the prince has two marks, one on each hand. Have you ever seen them?”

She was now staring intently down at the picture of her family, acting like they were complete strangers to her. “Yeah, everyone who knows Morgan has seen his hand marks. Don’t you reme—er, do you want to see them?” He had caught himself before he condescendingly made a comment he’d regret, but his way of saving the conversation was going to lead nowhere but disaster. “I can call him over here, if you want.”

“You mean the prince is here at the library! Yes please, call him over if it’s possible! I’ve always wanted to meet him!” She sounded thrilled at the prospect, and even though he knew that she’d met him many times before, he cupped his hands around his mouth and called for Morgan to come near. The young boy, who had been sitting with his parents across the room reading something with them, jumped at the sound of his name and bolted towards them, his blue hair flying everywhere as he ran.

“I’m here!” he chirped upon getting to their table, punching both fists into the air. Lucina looked at his hands, at the different marks on the back of them, and giggled gleefully, to which the little boy seemed confused. “Um, who’s this, Brady? Is she your girlfriend?”

Shaking his black head of hair, Brady resisted responding with, “No, it’s your sister,” instead choosing to be a bit more vague about things. “Nope, just a friend of mine. Her name’s Lucina. Now be nice and do the meetin’ thing for yourselves.” He hoped that they would get to talking and something would be said that would remind one or both of them about their actual status as brother and sister, but as he sat there and listened to them say next to nothing, he learned it was going to be a lot harder to solve the problem than that. “C’mon, names at least?”

“You already told him mine,” Lucina replied, still giggling, “but I’m Lucina. And you’re little Prince Morgan, the son of the ruling Exalt of Ylisse. I’ve heard so much about you, from books and television and everything! How do you do, young prince?”

“I’m doing good, miss Lucina!” The name felt weird on his tongue, something that he didn’t think twice about. “What do you know about me? Do books say nice things about me? Mother says I’m a smart kid and Father says I’m just like her. Do books talk about that?”

She nodded, happy to share the good news with him. “They sure do! They say so much about you that I’m sure they know more about you than you might!” Flipping the page of the book to a different one, not watching how Brady cringed as the picture disappeared from view, Lucina moved to a section just about Morgan. “The text in this book is rather large for being a book on current events,” she remarked, her eyes crossing the page to read what it said. “Maybe they mean for small kids like you to read it, Morgan!”

“Kids like me? Oh please let me read it!” Coming around the table to climb up into Lucina’s lap, Morgan seemed super excited to be getting to read a book with this strange girl he’d just met. As they embarked on the reading journey together, Brady couldn’t help but feel like he was watching something that shouldn’t have been happening. He peered past them to see what was on the page, the book talking about the home life for the prince, and it hit him that the reason the words were so large wasn’t because of Lucina’s assumption that it was for children to read. They were large because they were hiding the fact that Lucina herself had been pulled from the narrative, and neither she nor Morgan were going to realize it.

Over by the stairs, Maribelle was grilling Henry on his decision to steal Lucina the way he had, and he was completely unapologetic for his actions. “She wasn’t my target, no worries,” he told her with a laugh, poking a finger straight at her. “If your son hadn’t been holding your stupid umbrella, he would have been mine and you wouldn’t have known the difference.” Cue both her and Ricken correcting him on the terminology he’d used. “I know it’s actually a parasol, but that’s not even the point here! The real point is that everything’s fine with Lucina being mine, and unless you can give me three good reasons why it’s not, I’m not changing a thing.”

“Henry, you really should rethink what you’re saying,” Ricken half-pleaded, half-demanded, feeling Maribelle’s anger at them radiating in their direction. “She is so going to chew you out here in a few seconds…”

“Ha, as if I can’t take some broad trying to come up with dumb reasons why I’m wrong, even though I’m not wrong at all.” Henry puffed his chest out in pride, pushing his finger a bit closer to Maribelle.

She smacked him right out of the way before he got too close. “Number one, her younger brother, currently sitting on her lap because he feels the sibling bond with her despite not knowing he has a sister. Two, her father, a man who had so much riding on the birth of his older daughter that history now tells him he came into unexpectedly. And three, her mother, a brilliant woman who doted so much on her daughter, who now has to focus only on a son who wants to share the attention with someone else.” A pause, where she held three fingers up to represent the reasons. “Shall I continue, or is that enough to get you to rethink what you’ve done?”

“There’s no ‘rethinking’ anything! The moment I end this, you’ll go right to Chrom and tell him what I did. And while I know he appreciates a good joke every now and then, he’s not going to like me having taken his kid from him!” For the first time, Henry sounded genuinely scared to have to face punishment from what he’d done. “She wasn’t my target, and it’s your fault this happened, if you really think about it.”

Maribelle drew out a long sigh, shaking her head as she did. “No, you’re not pinning your flagrant practicing of illegal magic on me, not today. However, if your fear of being criminalized and punished is preventing you from fixing things, perhaps a compromise is needed to proceed.”

“Name the terms and I might agree. As long as I get a kid—“

“You reverse whatever spells you’ve placed on us all and I speak no words of this to anyone. This becomes our little secret, never to leave the trio of us grown adults.” Pantomiming zipping her lips, Maribelle seemed genuine enough with her suggestion, and after thinking it over for a few minutes, during which he looked at how happy Lucina was as she sat there with her brother, Henry gave in. Undoing the magic wasn’t nearly as fun as casting it in the first place, but when all was said and done and the room was exactly the same, minus Morgan’s small voice calling out that he couldn’t read the tiny text on the page, he felt somewhat okay with his decision.

There was, naturally, one oversight they all had made in reversing the spell the way that they had, but they didn’t dare speak of it. After all, it was in the past and a giant secret to be kept between them three. How would word of anything get out?

* * *

To try and refine her image as a mother, especially after having been told that it was her child that had been the actual target of the curse, Maribelle changed her tune on a few of the things that bothered her most about her son. He wasn’t constantly expected to be with either her or his father anymore, nor was he chided whenever his improper use of language got irritating. Most importantly, she wasn’t going to forbid him from speaking to anyone, no matter how she felt about their interactions.

The first time she went to visit her best friend and brought Brady along with her, after close to a year of keeping her son far away from her home, everything went perfectly fine. The apocalypse wasn’t started, deaths weren’t caused, and most of all, her son came home the same boy he had been when they left. After a few visits, though, she noticed that he was beginning to act a bit differently, as if his little not-boyfriend was influencing him. He promised that nothing was going on, and that everything was the way it should be, but she was wary of what he meant.

Then came the day where she and Lissa went to the library together for parenting class, both boys coming along with them, and everything that had been resolved right before the curse was lifted came to haunt them all. Maribelle had been careful to never tell her best friend a word of the truth, knowing that if she found out what had happened to her niece, she would go straight to Chrom and start a cycle of punishment that had been promised to not ever be started. When the four of them made it to the upper floor of the library, the scene that awaited them was one that Maribelle had been hoping would never happen, after the terms of surrender.

Every person with even slight relevance to the protection of Ylisse as a country was upstairs, cornering a familiar couple as they tried explaining their innocence. “Oh gods, I didn’t think bringing this up with them would result in them doing this on the one day you brought me to your class,” Lissa said, covering her mouth with her hand in shock. “Maribelle, if this ruins you getting to teach tonight, I am so sorry!”

“’Bringing this up’? What did you bring up, and with whom?” Maribelle looked at her friend, whose wide eyes and shocked, yet covered, expression said everything and nothing at all. “Lissa, dear, what did you say to your brother…?”

“I only said exactly what Owain told me, which I believed because why would he be telling me about his cousin being kidnapped unless it was true?” With her free hand, she reached towards her son, ruffling his blond hair as he awkwardly laughed, causing her to uncover her mouth and become more concerned. “Please tell me you weren’t lying about that, Owain! I could have totally ruined people’s lives if you were lying!”

“No worries, Mom, I said what Brady said to me. You know him, he won’t lie about anything.” Nudging Brady with his elbow, Owain cracked a huge grin. “But cool, we get to watch people get in trouble! I didn’t know libraries were this fun!”

Bending down to get to Brady’s ear, while her son watched what was happening with horror in his eyes, Maribelle whispered, “And what happened to the story of the curse being kept secret? I knew letting you two interact once more was a bad idea.”

“No one ever told me it was a secret, Ma, so I told the first person who would listen. Don’t be mad at me, please. It wasn’t like I was tryin’ to make this happen.” As his mother stood back upright, Brady sighed, closing his eyes and wishing that he wasn’t there to be witness to anything. “At least those guys are gonna get punished for what they did.”

“Punished! Yeah! Maybe someone’s gonna get their head cut off for it! Or maybe an arm, or a leg, or they’ll just be lame and take a hand or foot!” Owain seemed way too excited to be watching justice taking place, and no one was going to question him for it. After all, it wasn’t exactly every day that someone was getting busted for illegal magic use.

The bust ended with two people being banned from Ylisse for a year, to pay for what they’d done—it would have been longer, but in the last days of the trial to seal their fate, witnesses came forward and painted a scene that looked a lot less criminal than it really was. The promise might have accidentally been broken, but Maribelle would do what she could to make it up to the guys, even if it meant lying in court.

“And just what, exactly, are we going to do now that we’re criminals in Ylisse?” Ricken yelled at Henry once they were out in the middle of nowhere, somewhere on the Plegian side of the border with his home country. “We have a year before I can go home and try to rebuild my life and friendships!”

“Dark magic’s not illegal in Plegia, and raising Lucina for those few weeks really makes me want to try that stealing a kid thing again…” Henry stroked his chin, the heat of the summer sun beating down on him as he did. “What do you say, we find somewhere out here to try our hand at being parents again? Ooh, and maybe while we’re stuck in Plegia, we’ll find _my_ parents, preferably after we’ve stolen a kid, and we can show them how great at parenting I am even though they weren’t good to me! Sound like a plan?”

It was going to be one unbearably long year.


End file.
